The Darjeeling Limited
Boring, pretentious, unconvincing characters, melancholic, stupid.

I should have checked what other movies the director did. Life Aquatic, yeah. No surprise I did not like this one. Bleh. 

I liked Darjeeling Ltd, quite a lot actually. Life Aquatic was terrible though. 

I thought Life Aquatic was pretty awesome. Very surreal. Also the Royal Tenenbaums was pretty good. Wanted to see Darjeeling Limited.

Did see Up though, was very enjoyable, and surprisingly complex emotionally. 

although Rushmore is pretty damn good too. 

maybe becuase it felt like the weirdness was serving the plot, while in the other movies, the plot seems to be serving the weirdness.

Though, i thought Darjeeling actually held together pretty well, i liked it. 

Oh My God it's so bad. I expected it to be bad, and it was a lot worse.

I would like the next film I see to not be terrible, please. 

here's the first few :

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) - probably the best version of Oscar Wilde on screen, its beautifully shot, well acted (look out for Angela Lansbury's excellent turn as Sibyl Vane), and retains enough of the essence of the original story which is a classic.

7.5/10


A Face in the Crowd (1957) - not as well known but this is as good as Scorsese's King of Comedy, Lumet's Network and Wilder's Ace in the Hole as a satirical exploration of celebrity and power, and its eerily prescient in the age of reality tv.

Elia Kazan has a great script at his disposal and he also gets tremendous performances out of Andy Griffith (playing a drunk hobo who becomes an overnight radio sensation) and Patricia Neal (the woman who unintentionally creates the celebrity monster).

8/10


Coup De Grace (1976) - hadnt seen anything by Volker Schlondorff before but after seeing this, I'm inclined to track down more.

Set in the baltic states in 1919, two years after the Russian revolution and right in the middle of the civil war between the Whites and the Reds, Schlondorff paints a bleak look of a dying and decaying place by way of a love story between a prussian countess and a german officer. Its heavy going but completely hypnotic stuff.

7.5/10


Gomorrah (2008) - Overly chaotic and disparate look at the modern day italian mafia in Naples, but with a number of scenes that will burn themselves in your mind. This isnt a glamorisation of the mafia, but rather a fairly disturbing and brutal look at a 'business' that is almost everywhere and involves almost everyone.

The delibertate move to make it so chaotic does make for some confusion early on but sticking with it will more than reward you.

7-7.5/10


Hamlet (1948) - good, moody adaptation of the shaespeare play by Laurence Olivier that has some nice innovative camerawork and good performances.

On the downside, it strips away some crucial aspects of the play and makes the transitions in the main character a bit too sudden.

7-7.5/10


Stage Door (1937) - Lovely look at the behind the scenes life of aspiring stage actresses with a tremendous ensemble cast that work great together. Realism is not the main focus here, although there is a decent enough quota of 'realistic' drama, with the writing focusing more on the banter between the large array of its female cast.

And boy is the dialogue good, there is a 5 min scene with Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn trading barbs that is as perfectly written and delivered as any of the great screwball comedies.

7-7.5/10


The Straight Story (1999) - David Lynch does arthouse Disney movie and the results are spectaclar. Its not for everyone, the slow pace and lack of plot will put off quite a few people.

But those that can look past those qualities will be in for a treat. Apart from the above, its pretty much perfect in all areas. The characterisations and dialogue are of a very high quality (although the great acting also helps that aspect), the cinematography and music are amazing, and it has a great emotional punch that is completely devoid of any sentimentality whatsoever.

8.5-9/10 

http://legorobotcomics.com/?id=48 

Why does nitin's movie list so often correspond to Teh C's motw? 

Apart from the way no-one came out saying "wow that was awesome", yes, that's about right. 

Totally agreed. Apparently, I'm closed-minded for watching the movie and giving reasons why it was a piece of steaming fucking dog shit, according to my friends, who apparently liked it, even though they're black and were offended by the stereotypical racist twins or whatever.

Ok, sure whatever, but the movie still sucked balls. 

devastator's balls? 

Giant swinging wrecking balls. 

Some more from the backlog :

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) - pretty average, straight faced vampire spoof from Roman Polanski which does have a couple of hilarious moments but on the whole is poorly paced and misses far too often.

5-5.5/10


3 Women (1977) - Robert Altman's moody, psychological mindfuck was obviously inspired by Bergman's Persona and most likely also inspired Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Bergman's film was more concerned with an intellectual examination of its subject matter and Lynch's was more concerned with the atmosphere, style and its characters.

Altman's film, involving two women whose personalities are in sharp contrast when they first meet and move in together, sits somewhere between the two which leads to a number of problems since it cannot seem to determine how much weight to attach to each aspect. Regardless, its always intriguing and fascinating even if it gets a little frustrating at times.

7-7.5/10


The Exterminating Angel (1962) - pretty good satire from Luis Bunuel of upper class conformity. A number of guests at a formal dinner party find themselves trapped and unable to leave for inexplicable reasons that range from the outrageous to the absurd. Bunuel uses that to create a series of farcical situations that are both entertaining and interesting social commentary at the same time. It does tend to get a bit repetitive but is boosted by a genius ending.

7-7.5/10


A Canterbury Tale (1944) - another charming film from Powell and Pressburger loosely using Chaucer's theme of 'eccentric characters on a religious pilgrimage' to highlight the WWII experiences of the citizens of Kent. The plot is not important, Powell and Pressburger create interesting characters right from the start and their interactions are the highlight of the movie along with the highly impressive cinematography (which, amongst other things, features an amazing jump cut across centuries in a similar vein to 2001's famous jump cut with bone and the space shuttle).

7.5/10


Saboteur (1942) - above average Hitchcock with some good set pieces but with flat 'good' characters and some silly plotting.

5.5-6/10


Design for Living (1933) - above average screwball comedy from Lubitsch with Gary Cooper, Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins. Some very good bits, but most of them are near the start and it loses steam the longer it goes on.

5.5-6/10


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) - tell you what, some of the special effects here are amazing. There is an uncut transition from jekyll to hyde that is very very impressive (had to look up how they achieved this and the method is even more impressive and ingenious). Unfortunately I felt the movie itself was quite stilted, despite Frederic March's good performance and some interesting exploration of the more darker aspects of the story. Part of that was because the supporting cast is not up to scratch, part of it because it seems a bit rushed. I would have preferred it to be 20 min longer in order to allow the subplots to have been develop more.

6/10 

and more :

Kanal (1957) - very skilfully made wartime film from Andrzej Wajda that cant quite break the mould of stock characters but is otherwise an intense look at the Warsaw uprising, telling the story of a company of resistance fighters escaping the Nazi onslaught through the city's sewers.

7/10


Pigs and Battleships (1961) - Shohei Imamura is quickly becoming one of my favorite filmmakers, his penchant for scathing, cynical social critique and black humour is again on full display in this little known Japanese gem which follows the story of Kinta, a low level member of a yakuza gang in post war tokyo, and his girlfriend Hiroku against a backdrop of steeped corruption and US occupation. Has possibly the funniest scene I have seen in a long long time.

7.5-8/10


Queen Christina (1933) - corny as hell but Greta Garbo has quite an immense screen presence and carries all the corn very admirably. The first half is stronger than the second but this is very enjoyable old fashioned filmmaking.

6.5-7/10


Blow (2001) - absolute rubbish film which is far too concerned to run through as many events as possible in american dr*g smuggler George Jung's life, rather than the man himself.

3.5-4/10


Il Grido (1957) - the fifth great film from Michaelangelo Antonioni that I have seen and his earliest. His sparse style is not quite as refined in this outing but the signature shots and themes of individual isolation and alienation still leave quite an impression and the central performance by Steve Cochran as an italian sugar refinery worker on a road trip to nowhere after his long time lover leaves him is quite something.

7.5-8/10


Fort Apache (1948) - decent, fairly standard western by John Ford with Henry Fonda playing against type as a General Custer type commander of a cavalry regiment. As usual, I found some of Ford's insertions of humour quite annoying but the characters are likeable and there are some well executed set pieces.

6/10


Wall E (2008) - hmm, not quite a masterpiece, but definitely a great film. Loses some steam in the last act but the first 2/3 more than make up for that and the animation is amazing throughout. Also enjoyed the short Burn-E on the dvd.

8/10 

wally was one of the worst animation movies i saw yet. Sure, they had a nice render engine (particles were nice, lighting), but the design, the story, the 'humour' all pretty much sucked :/ 

Is a great movie at least among the recent ones. Very nice and naive story 

Pulsar + Nitin >>> megaman.

The graphics and textures were so good in some of it I was sure they'd used models instead of computer animation. 

I already feel like one of those fat lazy Ameri... I mean humans 700 years in the future. 

Blow (2001) - absolute rubbish film which is far too concerned to run through as many events as possible in american dr*g smuggler George Jung's life, rather than the man himself.

3.5-4/10

hmm...
i would rate it 9/10 

would love to hear why, one of the few movies I have seen recently that I struggled to find any positives for. 

I watched Wall-E on a long haul flight, which seemed strangely appropriate... 

This looks like the best movie ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo-gGes6qig 

... it does? 

i don't know how to describe it, i think its just a matter of a personal impressions, since it's based on a true story. i was curious of a story about life of George Jung. it is one of a few movies, that after watching it i was forced to google to find out more about GJ. and it was really interesting to see how he became one of the biggest cox smuggler of 70th.
shit i dont know what else i could add.
either you like it or don't/ and i like it