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Having time off, being in the mood to see movies and and having so many movies open has led to a flurry of screenings....and I've enjoyed every one of them.Adaptation: In movie reviewer parlance I would call it funny while remaining intelligent and touching without being sappy. Sure the whole thing is ultimately kind of a joke but the ride is great, the performances are fantastic (Chris Cooper for sure deserves the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and Meryl Streep being stoned is worth the price of admission all by itself) and the writing, directing and editing are all very very good.
The Two Towers: I LOVED this movie (never read the books)....who could deny that the (dark cloud spreading over the land) evil in this trilogy is (inadvertently) a direct reflection of the Bush administration and their backers. The problem is we don't have a wizard and an army of elves coming to save us. I applaud Peter Jackson...it can't be easy trying to portray this story on film; especially since it brings out all the line by line nitpicking story police that have read the book 5 - 20 times :-))
About Schmidt: This was my least favorite of the bunch. I thought it was just a bit too slow (although Kathy Bates saves the day just as the movies about to collapse under its own weight). Nicholson was good and the ending was touching but the running joke wears a little thin after the 4th time. All in all it was entertaining but I just don't see how it deserves all the Oscar talk.
Talk To Her: A strange, interesting movie with excellent performances and a story that is touching and uncomfortable at the same time. It looks at what it means to love from many different angles without any of them being too much of a cliché.
Max: A little hard to take (when it was over the audience just kind of sat quietly) as it depicts Hitler before W.W.II just as he was forming his socio political views AND trying to have is art career take off. The whole time he is being encouraged in his art by a Jewish art dealer and encouraged in his politics by some very dark men. The battle - both internal and external - for how he will ultimately express himself is very compelling and the portrayal of his growing sense of power and madness is disturbing.
Love Liza: What do you do when your wife kills herself? Lets hope none of us ever has to find out but this movie portrays one of the possibilities and it pulls no punches in doing so. For people who like Hollywood movies it would be frustrating as there's no real resolution (well, there is, but it's not neat and tidy).
Catch Me If You Can: It was good clean fun. Better than I expected and I didn't feel like I wasted my money.
Star Trek Nemesis: I really liked this....sure it was a cheesy cliché with bad special effects and (a lot of) bad acting but that's what Star Trek has always been. I was into it the whole time and thought it was at times fairly exciting and at others reasonably touching.
Solaris: Call me crazy but I loved this movie. It created a mood from the very beginning that took hold of me and didn't let go the whole time (I hardly blinked). It was visually beautiful, the acting was very good (GC surprised me) and I always love movies (or stories) that ask metaphysical questions. It's too bad that it wound up in no mans land as it was too slow and too deep for the average American sci fi (or George Clooney) fan, and didn't have enough credibility to draw the art film fan.
Rabbit Proof Fence: Devastating true story of Aboriginal "half-castes" who are taken from their mothers to have their "blackness" trained and bred out of them (for their own good of course). Somehow the movie doesn't glorify the girls journey (1,500 by foot) home - or their arrival there - but it still captures the power of their spirits and love. The girl who played the lead, although quite young and without much dialogue, gives a tremendous performance (among the best I've seen....ever) and the performances of the mother and grandmother were also very very good. The things you find out at the end aren't pleasant and the audience was clearly moved and a bit stunned.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." — Benito Mussolini.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag." - Huey Long
Follow Ups:
is a nuclear mushroom cloud, a la North Korea...And we gots our previous Prez Willie C. to thank for that one.
(Just want to point out that neither party has an exclusive hold on evil cloud-making)
"Just want to point out that neither party has an exclusive hold on evil cloud-making"Of course not, that's why I didn't mention any parties (and GW's backers are, in many cases, the same as BC's).
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." — Benito Mussolini.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag." - Huey Long
despite my disdain for Leo.Thought: if Kip (of Bosom Buddies) had gotten out of advertising and gone to the FBI, he would have surely been Handratty.
I found Nemisis redundant and completely unispired. And I loved the original Star Trek and First Generation series.Solaris? Ah, hmmmm. Not as bad as I expected. But that didnt make it good.
And LOTR? Boring and insipid in the extreme. And a sense of forboding alluding to the evil manifestation of Dubya and his evil minions? What absolute horseshit, give me a break. Keep the political posturing to yourself or on the outside and not here.
joe
found TTT draging on too much as well. Of course I read the book before (twice) and therefore looked at the movie with different eyes. I loved the book (it is just a fairy tail, but nice), but why drag out every little detail in the movie? Especially those fighting scenes just don't seem to end. Where are the good old movies where you see one guy swinging his sword at another guys head and then "cut" and you imagine the rest. Why do we have to be bombarded by rolling heads and blood all over the place? Is it not exciting enough without it?
What I liked though were the scenes with a long view of the scenery, since I am a NewZealander myself and I just love that country.Solaris> I am suprised that you had that film at the theatre in the states. It is very old and I thought it was all forgotten (or am I talking about another one).
Again, I read the book 25 years ago, but in this case I liked the movie. But maybe if you have not the read the book first, you might not appreciate the film as much. I can only recommend to read the book (Stanislaw Lem, Solaris).
By the way I am the one who wrote the thread about the solaris DVD, but I hadn't read this thread first when I wrote mine. Strange that this coincides.
Okay....I won't hold YOUR posturing against you when I read your posts ;-))Seriously though...it wasn't political posturing, it was how I felt when I watched the movie; so, this being the film forum, it absolutely belongs in my synopsis.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." — Benito Mussolini.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag." - Huey Long
The fact that you are unable to appreciate it is your loss.AuPh
...appreciate droll, uninspired, dimwittedly manipulative movies is my cross to bear.Why pray tell do characters lapse into made up languages from one scene to the next? You know, two characters engage in a dialog in english and then in the very next scene the same two characters speak in a made up tongue? And then go back to english for the next scene? Why do we see scene after scene of panoramic long shots of hills with 3 or 4 minute characters running across them in chase? Time and time and time again?
I'm trying hard to appreciate this but all it made me do was roll my eyes and long to leave the theater. Predicting exactly what would happen next and waitng through the deathly slow and dull exposition to get to the set piece battles tried my patience to the limit. And I'm not arguing for more battles or action. It's just that the artifically lengthened filler in between went no where, accomplished nothing and played as little more than a rudderless director playing for time.
Character development is not spending large amounts of time watching characters do nothing or do the same thing over and over again ad nauseum....
joe
This should be more to your liking since it probably contains all of the unsophisticated inspiration and backwoods witticism you won't find in the Rings trilogy. Sorry, but I'll stick with the droll charm of Middle Earth! ;^)
q
What movie is that quote from? I've been trying to figure it out as it's stuck in my head.
:o)
.
oh man oh man...thats so bad its funny....
;^)
Of the films you've reviewed I've seen The Two Towers (twice now!), Star Trek Nemesis, and Catch Me If you Can. Although I felt Star trek Nemesis was "good enough" it was ultimately less satisfying than expected. Nevertheless, I concur wholeheartedly with your reviews of the other two movies I've seen. I plan on catching Adaptation next and then Rabbit Proof Fence at the earliest opportunity. I'll probably wait to catch Solaris on video after being bored to sleep by the Russian original which I "lovingly" refer to as The Tunnel; several of the others look like good candidates for rental as well.Cheers,
AuPh
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