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Film Thread.
I thought a trio of themed threads about other entertainment media might be good. If you're not interested, please just ignore the thread and pick some threads that interest you from here: http://celephais.net/board/view_all_threads.php

Anyway, discuss films...
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Lollertoaster. 
On the plus side, it would be pretty easy to make a game based on either of these movies.

With some lolmalade. 
 
Cars - I have to say that given the subject matter, the uninspired trailer and the lukewarm reception upon release, this was probably the pixar film I was least interested in seeing.

Turns out there was never any cause for concern, the movie just adding to pixar's ever growing list of quality films.

The opening scenes feature some stunning use of animation, showing just why Pixar is top of the heap when it comes to this sort of stuff. None of the other (computer) animation studios ever make this good use of their medium. And the cars in this movie have more character than all of the cameos in the recent Shrek movies combined.

The ending's a slight letdown, it was always going to be predictable, but I thought the execution was slightly lacking.

Still, probably on par with Monsters Inc, better than Bug's Life and Finding Nemo and not quite as great as either of The Toy Storys or the Incredibles.

8/10 
Cars... 
I thought plot wise it was one of the weakest Pixar films, everything was so clich�, could pretty much guess the whole story after 10 minutes. From a visual and technical point of view it's brilliant though.
Incredibles is still #1 Pixar film for me.
Really looking forward to Ratatouille though, and the one after that looks interesting (and I'm not only saying that cause the protagonist is a cute little robot =D ). 
Bal 
it was definitely predictable, but I thougt it was still very well executed. Then again, I dont mind cliches as long as they're done well. 
 
Holiday (1938) - very similar to George Cukor's later The Philadelphia Story, also with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, and my reaction to it was about the same. Its an entertaining, predictable comedy-drama but nothing more.

Cary Grant plays Cary Grant but is still very good as a free thinking middle class man bethrothed to a high society millionaire's daughter. Katherine Hepburn plays Katherine Hepburn, but is suprisingly watchable (except in her 'big' scenes where she hams it up quite a lot) in the role of the elderly sister who is the "black sheep of the family".

The plot might be predictable all the way from the first scene to the last but the script is sharp in its dialogue and the whole thing is neaty executed.

6.5/10


Flags of Our Fathers - reasonably decent war movie from Clint Eastwood, although it struggles to distinguish itself from better films that did the same thing, and resorts to oversentimentality at the end to get its emotional point across.

Still, it has some very good acting from Adam Beach who plays one of the men caught up in the flag hero saga of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Most the scenes with him are excellent and get across the point much better than some of the more heavy handed stuff that follows.

7/10


Forbidden Games (1952) - Rene Clement's heart breakingly tragic masterpiece really does deserve more recognition than it gets. His movie about a 6 yr old french girl that is orphaned whilst fleeing a city with her parents during WWII, and taken in by a peasant family with whom she forms a strong bond is deceptively simple but very strong in its impact.

Part of its strength lies in the perfect performances of the children, but the majority of its impact is derived from the fact that it never tries to create emotion, but simply observe it.

The last 20 min or so do feel a bit rushed, but it all leads to a very memorable ending that is perfectly executed.

8/10 
Starbuck 
finished The Fountain.

comments later, but you had some questions? What specifically were you wondering? 
Gonna See 1408 On Thursday 
/me crosses fingers 
1408 
A great short story it made. A reasonable move it coud make, with quality acting and no pseudo-scares. 
 
Rome Season 1 - bit disappointing because they could have done better with the material, but overall it's still quite a decent show, just a bit below HBO's recent high standards. There's probably 6 very good-excellent episodes and the remaining six are fairly average, including the very flat final episode which really should have been so much better.

The production values are very high for tv and so what you get is a beautiful looking show with great attention to detail, but the scripts and acting are not always up to the task. Although this season of the show looks at a fictionalised version of the events surrounding the rise and fall of Julis Caesar, its main focus is a semi-soap opera of two roman soliders and their families. I found the scripting and acting for this part of the show to really struggle and only when the show allows Ciaran Hinds to take centre stage as Caesar, and gives him material to work with, does it really come to life. There's also a lot of gratituity under the umbrella of "realism", but I cant really say it bothered me very much even though it was quite noticeable.

7/10 
Review Request 
nitin - Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is apparently quite good. Don't know if its up your alley, but I like your reviews so... Interested in your take. 
Scarecrow 
there's two, the one with ellen page and catherine keener :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0802948/

and the more unknown one :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0802948/

you're right in assuming it's probably not up my alley but I'd probably still be interested in the first one, if it ever makes its way to Oz anytime soon. Low budget indie stuff comes and goes in a flash usually. 
Oh Almost Forgot 
The Fountain - It's definitely a very ambitious effort from Darren Aronofsky, who aims for a science fiction film in the same vein as 2001 and Solaris. But, unlike those movies, this has a fairly simple concept (death is ok) underneath the ponderous nature and recurring attempts at profundity. Once you take away the flashy technique, which is admittedly very good, there is once again not a whole lot left underneath.

The movie has three interconnected stories, some real and some a story within a story, and in all of them Hugh Jackman's character is looking for the answer to immortality for his wife. There is a heavy mayan influence in all three stories and its this aspect that links them together, sometimes in an obivous way and sometimes in a more deliberately oblique way. What is a bit annoying is that Aronofsky almost goes out of his way to make this a difficult film to get into by cutting between the stories foy symbolic purposes, but at the same time reducing the viewer's involvement in any of them.

However, I did find the central relationship between Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz to work for me, mainly because of the effective performances, even though its easy to see why it wouldn�t for another person. Without that centre though, there would be even less reason for a viewer to become engaged in the movie despite the three stories coming together quite well by the end.

7/10 
Ocean's Eleven 
Boring, annoying soundtrack. 
 
D�j� Vu - Tony Scott's latest is actually very watchable for quite a while, a much more restrained movie than his usual frenetic style of dizzying the viewer with flashy pointless visuals. Till a certain point its also fairly interesting, mainly due to Denzel's committed performance, but as soon as the movie goes against the science it has so laboriously explained, it falls apart.

There's quite a few loopholes in the plot, which are the same loopholes that most movies of this sort fall into, but spending such an inordinate amount of time on the science just amplifies them when they occur. I think that you either go down the path of explaining stuff and staying consistent with the explanation (12 Monkeys and Primer) or ignoring plotholes and sidestep around them by not making the science a main focus (Terminator and Back to the Future).

Anyway, there' still a few nifty things, including a split time car chase and denzel's character's Laura like obsession with a dead woman, but they are not enough to overcome the scripting deficiencies.

5.5/10


Great Expectations (1946) - Even though I quite liked the novel when I read it about 10 years ago at school, I've never really seen any adaptations of it. But I cant imagine any being better than David Lean's excellent movie.

Like all great adaptations, it retains the essence of the novel not by being as faithful as it can to every plotpoint of the book (which this isnt) but by evoking the same feel and tone. Having said that, I was a bit disappointed by the changed 'happy' ending, especially when the printed ending was already changed from a more pessimistic one.

Still, apart from that minor complaint, it�s a very well made movie that is hard to fault.

8.5/10



Little Children - Similar in theme and concept to American Beauty, but this is nowhere near the same league. A poor blend of satire, drama and black comedy about suburbia this is a very slow movie which doesn�t necessarily have uninteresting characters, but their interactions are so fragmented and pointless that the drama never has any weight, the satire never hits its mark and the comedy is never in the right tone.

Todd Field's last movie, In the Bedroom, was also overly slow but had phenomenal acting from all its performers and a decent script. This has neither, although the acting is never bad (not oscar worthy though, another wasted nomination), it just isnt good enough to overcome the other problems.

4.5/10 
Stalker 
I just got Stalker on DVD, but I haven't had the 3 hours to sit down and watch it. I'm looking forward to the opportunity. 
Stalker 
i thought this was very good.

Not for everyone though. 
 
Hard Candy (2006) - When I read about this upon release, it sounded very similar to Audition, except with a pedophile angle. I never understood how that would work because if you make the victim unsympathetic, the majority of the impact would be lost.

Turns out that problem is there but otherwise it is only slightly similar to the japanese movie, and more interested in wordplay between its two lead characters (one who is really a 14 yr old vigilante, and the other who is a pedophile). The acting's great and its reasonably well made but there's big problems with the script. There's some stupid plotting but, more importantly, the way the main character's written is almost never believable. Ellen Page does pretty well with what she has, but she almost never sounds/behaves like a 14 yr old and that just keeps taking you out of the movie. Its also a missed oppurtunity, because if she did act like a 14 yr old more often, it owuld also be a more disturbing film.

5.5/10


Shakespeare in Love - another sub par multiple oscar winner that's light as fluff and badly made. I'm sure the idea sounded good and clever on paper and its obvious a lot of money went into costume/production design, but the rest of it is so very average in every department.

5/10 
 
Harsh Times (2005) - David Ayer's first film as director is very similar in setting and story to his screenplay for Training Day, but I think this is a slightly better movie because of the stronger acting. Christian Bale is excellent, despite his accent not being entirely convincing, as a troubled ex-war veteran trying to restart his life in the latino community of LA along with his friend Mike (a one dimensional character played pretty well by Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez).

There's some interesting stuff here such as the convincing relationship between two close friends who nevertheless fuel each other's destructive tendencies and the evocation of the low-life setting also seems pretty authentic. But what it lacks is a focused screenplay, Ayer appears to know where he wants the movie to go but has trouble getting it there in a non-contrived fashion. He also doesn�t seem to have enough faith in his actors and tries a bit too hard with some unnecessary and distracting tricks to bring out Bale's repressed psychological condition.

On the whole, it's definitely a movie most people will not like because of the generally unlikable characters and bleakness of tone, but its worth a watch for Bale's impressive work.

6/10 
 
The Verdict - Written by Mamet, directed by Lumet and with one of newman's best performances, does anything else need to be said? I guess I should point out that my one problem with the movie has always been the unrealistic movieish approach towards the legal process but newman's acting and mamet's characterisation are so good that it doesn�t really matter all that much. Sidney Lumet also makes sure he has an unsentimental approach (as always) throughout which also helps buy some of the more implausible scenes.

The story of a past his prime alcoholic ambulance chaser lawyer who takes on a medical malpractice suit against the system is pretty clich� stuff but it�s the nuances in newman's character like always having personal selfish reasons taking precedence over "doing the right thing" that make it compelling.

7.5/10 
 
Slings and Arrows Season 1 - One of the best shows most people will never see, this extremely well written canadian series set at a troubled Shakespearean festival is frequently hilarious and regularly engaging as a drama.

The cast consists of mostly unknowns, although a pre-Hollywood Rachel McAdams does feature in a major role, but they are all uniformly great and eat up the blackly comic dialogue.

The more familiar one is with shakespeare, the beter the show is, but the great thing is it works even if you dont know any shakespeare.

8.5/10


The Story of Marie and Julien (2003) - Jacques Rivette has a name for making extremely long movies (his Out 1 is a notorious 13 hrs), but this one is relatively tame length wise clocking in at 151 min.

It is also the stereotypical european film - techincally well made, excellently acted but slow, meandering, cold, sterile and purely academic. As with all stuff, I dont really have a problem with that type of movie as long as it is well made. And for a while, this one is full of some very interesting ideas. But before it can seriously explore any of them, it moves on to another one.

It demands a lot of the viewer, which is fine in my book (and is also helped by Emanuelle Beart's very good performance), but then doesnt return in proportion.

5.5/10


The Sword of Doom (1966) - Kihachi Okamato's great film which can either be seen as the story of a bad samurai trying to be good or of a regular samurai completely engulfed by the desire for violence is a fantasticly dark character study in the guise of a samurai movie.

The fight scenes are terrific with the choreography ranging from good to brilliant, but it's the confident storytelling that really grabs one's attention along with some truly spectacular cinematography.

Unfortunately it's let down by a very abrubt ending after a terrific buildup which according to some quick research is due to this being the first of an intended trilogy that never got finished due to a lack of funding. That info is not surprising because it really does feel as if it ended simply because they ran out of money to make any more.

A pity because it drags it down from a classic flm to a great one.

8/10

[b]Perfume (2006) - Many great directors including Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese passed on the adaptation of the famous german novel, claiming it was unfilmable.

For close to two hours, Tom Tykwer proves them wrong as he makes a spectacular film charting the story of Jean-Baptiste Genouille (well played by brit Ben Whishaw), whose incomparable sense of smell and inexplicable lack of a personal scent isolates him from society and results in his single objective in life becoming the preservation of the perfect scent - the skin of beautiful women.

This is darkness of a different kind and its very well realised by Tykwer and his cast, although only Whishaw gets to flex any actin muscles.

But, there's a reason why it was considered unfilmable and its the ending. Assuming whats hown here is close to what happens in the novel, there is no way that can be communicated in a visual medium. Tykwer's attempt is interesting but the change in tone that eventuates to bring about this ending which when coupled with the direction overkill during this sequence will probably leave most people either laughing or scratching their heads, even though the events are a perfectly logical extension of what's gone before.

Still for two hours its a great film, and all the ending does is bring it down to good.

7/10 
 
The Nights of Cabiria (1957) - Fedrico Fellini's episodic look at the story of a na�ve but feisty prostitute is very similar in structure and plotting to his later La Dolce Vita, the main difference being that this one looks at the life of the poor rather than the life of the rich. Giulietta Masina plays the title role of Cabiria in a less calculated and more natural perfromance than in La Strada but a lot of this, whilst well made, is very repetitive. It does work though, mainly because Masina sells the naivety of the character well enough to make her surprise at comitting the same mistake more than once believable.

6.5/10



The Wicker Man (1973) - The british cult classic has a very big reputation as the Citizen Kane of horror movies but even though it follows most of the genre's conventions, it never really feels like one. And that aspect is both refreshing and disappointing. It�s a very intelligently written movie with some very interesting themes as it tells the story of a devoutly christian officer completely out of his depth investigating the disappearance of girl on a secluded island occupied by pagans. But something about it feels forced. I cant quite put my finger on it, maybe it�s the sometimes misplaced musical bits that are there to depict the paga rituals or maybe it just hammers in the pagan/christian conflict too hard for my liking. Either way, it's a worthwhile watch overall but I don�t quite agree with its stature.

6/10 
 
Being Julia (2004) - a sort of modern british version of All About Eve, and this has almost the same characterisations and the same plot but for most its running time, it constantly reminds you of that far superior film about a popular but aging stage actress, the artifice she creates around her and the scheming young actress who wants to take her place.

Only towards the end, when Annette Bening's character carries out her revenge does it actually come to life, and it is also the only time I actually thought Bening was any good. For the most part though, it's just a fairly average by the numbers movie that seems to be on autopliot.

5.5/10



Tombstone (1993) - one of the few modern westerns and also another take on the Wyatt Earp story, I thought this was terrible apart from Val Kilmer's excellent work. Kilmer is great as the alcoholic Doc Holliday character but unfortunately the rest of it is a poorly told, scored and acted movie that is never convincing.

5/10



Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954) - Jacques Becker's excellent, smooth and suave crime film has the sort of storytelling mastery that is missing from most modern films. It�s a very atmospheric and confidently made piece of work, which although having a clich�d plot, is very engaging due to the fine performances and also the focus on its characters and their motivations, rather than action.

7.5/10 
 
Hot Fuzz - I'm not a huge Shaun of the Dead fan but this is pretty funny. It's not the second coming of comedy either, but it definitely hits a lot more than it misses. Generally structured like a satire until the last 30 min when it goes into full on spoof territory, it successfully riffs everything from Bad Boys 2 to The Shining to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I love the way how its actually shot, edited and scored like a Michael Bay movie, so much so that it will pass as a good action film for a lot of people. It does occasionally try a bit too hard, but on the whole, very nicely done.

7/10 
Yay... 
...glad you got to see it! Caught it while visiting my sister recently. The whole family was on the floor in places. One thing that really pushed my buttons was how they shot, edited and backed the boring police paperwork/clue analysis sections...who knew hack work could be so exciting :) 
Distrans 
you've obviously never sen any of the CSI shows :) 
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