Last Movie you Watched?

Seems like every WB film is cropped. As for TDP, why did they go 1:85? Odd choice.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Seems like every WB film is cropped. As for TDP, why did they go 1:85? Odd choice.

I think it was just lower budget, I'm not sure. Maybe a choice by the director. Considering the smaller scale of this outing, it's fitting.

Oh yeah, TDP has Marc Alaimo in a small role.

He seems to only have small roles in flicks. It's always disappointing seeing his appearance in TOTAL RECALL, because it seems so fitting that he would work with Ronny Cox and Michael Ironside.

NETWORK (1976)

I've always under-rated this film, for whatever reason. After revisiting it again tonight, I have to say that it's a solid work which still remains relevant today. The themes of humanity, surrounding Schumacher and Christensen, were outstanding, and the most interesting for me. And that poor bastard Beale.

1976 may have been the greatest and/or most important years in cinema history.

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

Dirty Harry is still the best with Magnum Force as Second Best.

I like the part in Dirty Harry when Callahan is torturing Scorpio in San Francisco 49ers football stadium and Scorpio is pleading:

I have rights!

I want my Lawyer!

You don't have any rights, SCUMBAG!

You killed a little girl!

Your rights went out of the window!!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421715/

j7wild wrote:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (PG-13) starts out with a Hospital scene where an old woman on her deathbed asks her adult daughter to read from a diary of a man named Benjamin Button, a man who had the appearance of a 70 year old when he was born and as the years passes, he is aging backward.

To tell more would be to give the movie and its message away.

The movie is directed by David Fincher (Alien 3, Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room) who is working against his type not having much experience directing an Epic film that requires deep storytelling.

The script is by writer Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Ali, Munich) and the storytelling style is a bit Forrest Gumpesque without the humor.

Every scene is meticulously detailed; the dialogue is sharp; the cinematography brings out the life out of every frame in a movie where the underlying main message it's trying to convey is dark.

The acting by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and the supporting cast is crisp and unpretentious; there is even a beautiful musical soundtrack to add a touch melancholy to the movie.

Running at 167 min, by the time it ends, you didn't even feel like you been sitting there for almost 3 hours - the movie grabs your attention from the beginning and you won't even have time to be bored to look at your watch.

It will be hard to pick a Best Picture this year.

Both this movie and "The Changeling" are equally brilliant even if they are not in the same genre and both deserve a Best Picture.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is scheduled for wide release on December 25th and I have one word of advice:

bring lots of tissues!!

I give it a 10 out of 10!!
:

the above was my OFFICIAL ONLINE review dated November 25th, 2008; one month before this film was official wide released in theaters in the USA.

I saw this at a special by invitation only press screening and after 3+ years, my review still stands.

This movie (or the Changeling, the only other film in 2008 I gave a 10/10 to) should had won Best Picture, not that stupid movie about a bunch of Microsoft Support employees who won the lottery that only a handful of people have seen!!

I agree with what you say j7 about The Curious Case of Ben Button. It's up there in my top 3 with A Streetcar Named Desire and Casablanca!

Mr. Brown wrote:

1976 may have been the greatest and/or most important years in cinema history.

Nah. It was a very good year, make no mistake, but it didn't do too much to alter the course of the medium.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies, right up there with CRASH, THE DEER HUNTER, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

Oh wow. You look at NETWORK as I look at CRASH?

I think the human element is pretty good at least in NETWORK, unlike in CRASH. Holden owns.

Harmsway wrote:

Mr. Brown wrote:

1976 may have been the greatest and/or most important years in cinema history.

Nah. It was a very good year, make no mistake, but it didn't do too much to alter the course of the medium.

1927 all the way.

In my mind, NETWORK is a Mel Brooks film that everyone took seriously.

j7wild wrote:

I saw this at a special by invitation only press screening and after 3+ years, my review still stands.

Sigh.

Revolutionary Road

what I'll say is that DiCaprio and Winslet do well in this fairly destructive relationship of theirs. Flippant pant is this is what would've happened if Jack survived Titanic, boom, boom. Anyway, it seemed an alright film but nothing beyond that. I've read it described as some parts Mad Men, some parts American Beauty and thusly not quite seeing the 4/4 Ebert gave it. Having seen The Reader I don't know which out of this and that Winslet deserved the Oscar more for.

Sharky wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies, right up there with CRASH, THE DEER HUNTER, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

I hate you, but you knew that.

(By the way -- which CRASH are you slamming? Cronenberg or Haggis? Because they're both pretty worthless if you ask me).

The Haggis one surely. Sorry, Haggfish.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies, right up there with CRASH, THE DEER HUNTER, and THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

I hate you, but you knew that.

Ha! You know you love me.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

(By the way -- which CRASH are you slamming? Cronenberg or Haggis? Because they're both pretty worthless if you ask me).

I meant the Haggis one, but yeah, I don't care for the car crash porno pic either.

Sharky wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies

Dude, how can it be an unintentional comedy when it's already an intentional comedy? (Same with THERE WILL BE BLOOD.)

Harmsway wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies

Dude, how can it be an unintentional comedy when it's already an intentional comedy? (Same with THERE WILL BE BLOOD.)

That's news to me. Must remember to tune into this the next airing of Harmsway's Movie Revisionism 101.

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

I guess people didn't like the alien thing. Indy switching from supernatural to sci-fi. Oh well.

I found the flick to be well crafted, but lifeless. The camera movements and the orchestration of movement within the frame is like a dance. I mean that as a complement. Spielberg has a strong grasp of that. I just didn't give two craps about anything that happened in the movie.

I thought it had some inventive moments, and some witty and clever moments. Though CGI action sequences in an Indy movie...? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o19CaOSuD8

That really plagues the second half. And it kills the spirit for me.

Ford is still pretty good, but I don't see the same spark in him. Karen Allen could have not even be here and I wouldn't care. She's so great in RAIDERS, but it's like she's justing running through the motions for a big check this time. John Hurt is alright. Ray Winstone is okay. Blanchett is okay. Shia Lebeouf. This is the first movie I've seen with him in it... all the way through. I had to shut off I, ROBOT 40 minutes in. He's actually got a nicely relaxed style on screen. He's not bad. But he's kind of annoying.

Anywho, it's a well oiled machine that somewhat bored me out of my crystal skull after a while.

Ranking the Indy flicks?

1. RAIDERS
2. TEMPLE
3. CRUSADE
4. KINGDOM

Oh yeah, Williams seems asleep at the wheel to my ears.

And please gentle Jesus never let anyone make an Indy movie with just Shia LaBeouf.

Sharky wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

NETWORK is one of my all-time favourites. A fantastic script and cast.

And a terrible film. One of my favourite unintentional comedies

Dude, how can it be an unintentional comedy when it's already an intentional comedy? (Same with THERE WILL BE BLOOD.)

That's news to me. Must remember to tune into this the next airing of Harmsway's Movie Revisionism 101.

NETWORK and THERE WILL BE BLOOD are both black comedies. I've always thought that much was obvious.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD is blacker than most, true, but Paul Thomas Anderson was open about his wish to have the audience laughing; he said that he and Daniel Day Lewis sometimes just died on set while filming some of Plainview's scenes. The final scene of BLOOD is nothing other than exercise in absurd comedy.

I never heard anyone say that. But it's how I viewed some of it. Nice to see I'm not totally insane.

Yeah, NETWORK was supposed to be satire. It just doesn't seem like it anymore.

Hmmm.... well, nevertheless the attempt at comedy of the absurd very much distances me from any kind of empathy for the characters. I'm about as emotionally engaged as I am watching "Springtime for Hitler." If that was to achieve something akin to Brecht's alienation effect, then I suppose job done, but to what end?