bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 13:09:40 GMT -5
CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR This movie, based on true events, went through what I like to call the "Forrest Gump" filter, where everything from the past (70s, 80s) is just a bit more bright and glamorous than you might remember. Hanks is definitely charming as Charlie Wilson and Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays the straight man while having his own funny lines. The movie was good, but it felt like one big "You see how 9/11 happened?" movie.
**1/2 out of *****
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 13:12:14 GMT -5
In the last two days ive seen Children of Men, Sweeney Todd, No Country, and Michael Clayton. Needless to say, ive enjoyed my last few days of movie watching. Out of 5. - Children of Men [****] - Sweeney Todd [****1/4] - No Country [****3/4] - Michael Clayton [****] I think I'm the only person who wasn't completely blown away by No Country For Old Men. What seems like a recurring theme with the movies I've seen lately, the lead actors performances saved me from what I saw as a dull movie. Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem nailed it, but like I said with Glengarry Glen Ross, it was a character study more than a movie. ***1/2 out of *****
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Post by chibidiablo on Jan 10, 2008 13:19:50 GMT -5
Watching Enemy of the State now. It's f***ing great
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Grendel
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
But ... why is all the rum gone?
Posts: 17,593
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Post by Grendel on Jan 10, 2008 13:35:12 GMT -5
I saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday. Now I think I'm going to have to watch the original. I thought that it was a great little western.
Earlier I watched Resident Evil: Extinction. I thought it was the best of the series, but I hated the first one.
I'm currently watching some movie called Warriors of Terra. Some animal rights activists break into a lab and release the wrong thing .... Not impressed at all with it. The camera work is really smurfing annoying. I know what they were trying to do, but it didn't work for me.
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 13:55:32 GMT -5
Agree with you partly on the others, but EQUILIBRIUM.... You mean the ending, when the villain begs for mercy, and Bale has a flashback to Emma Watson's fate in the fire chamber.....mercy denied....didn't work for you? Its one of the few vengeance-driven endings in the action genre that effectively works, because of that one little edit. I just feel like there could've been a much better movie there. I've always heard it compared to the Matrix and, aside from the trenchcoats and guns, it wasn't the Matrix at all. If they could do this movie again, still with Christian Bale, but upped the budget and gave it to a different director, I think it could've been a better movie. Compared to the other movies I saw in the same day (Dan In Real Life and Glengarry Glen Ross) it just wasn't nearly as good, but maybe because both of those were character driven. I never thought it was the MATRIX........because its better than THE MATRIX, and more interesting on a cerebral level. Instead of some nonsense of a prophecy or Ted Logan trying to kung fu, EQUILIBRIUM had some great action spots that are simply stunning. From Bale's fight in the dark to taking out everyone in little movement with gunfire....insane but incredible. Besides, I liked how Kurt Wimmer did alot with very little. Bay spent $120+ million for THE ISLAND, while Wimmer had peanuts, and made for a more interesting and alienating futuristic environment. Guess who made more out of their budget? Besides, it beats the MATRIX sequels, right?
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 13:56:28 GMT -5
Watching Enemy of the State now. It's smurfing great I liked ENEMY OF THE STATE. When it was called THE CONVERSATION.
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 13:57:20 GMT -5
I saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday. Now I think I'm going to have to watch the original. I thought that it was a great little western. Earlier I watched Resident Evil: Extinction. I thought it was the best of the series, but I hated the first one. I'm currently watching some movie called Warriors of Terra. Some animal rights activists break into a lab and release the wrong thing .... Not impressed at all with it. The camera work is really smurfing annoying. I know what they were trying to do, but it didn't work for me. YUMA was really good, and the original is quite good too. Didn't bother with EXTINCTION. I mean, its more stupidity from Paul We Suck Anderson and his woman. Whatever.
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Post by ellisdee on Jan 10, 2008 13:59:16 GMT -5
30 Days Of Night.
To Borrow from Mr Hicks..
Bills quick review....piece of shit!
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Grendel
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
But ... why is all the rum gone?
Posts: 17,593
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Post by Grendel on Jan 10, 2008 13:59:50 GMT -5
I saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday. Now I think I'm going to have to watch the original. I thought that it was a great little western. Earlier I watched Resident Evil: Extinction. I thought it was the best of the series, but I hated the first one. I'm currently watching some movie called Warriors of Terra. Some animal rights activists break into a lab and release the wrong thing .... Not impressed at all with it. The camera work is really smurfing annoying. I know what they were trying to do, but it didn't work for me. YUMA was really good, and the original is quite good too. Didn't bother with EXTINCTION. I mean, its more stupidity from Paul We Suck Anderson and his woman. Whatever. Yeah, but there's something about zombie movies, and Milla Jovovich kicking the crap out of zombies ... but maybe it's just me.
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 14:04:05 GMT -5
FIDO It doesn't take long for the hilarity of Fido's central idea to kick in: the world is reeling from the Zombie War, and the undead are being contained in two different ways. Some of them are roaming loose in fenced-off wilderness zones. The rest are, thanks to the good people at the ZomCom corporation, docile and domesticated--indeed, available as house servants for the upwardly-mobile. Such is the case with the Robinson family, a suburban clan who seem to have stepped straight out of an old episode of Lassie. Little Timmy is happy about the new manservant, whom he promptly dubs "Fido," and Fido himself is fine as long as the mechanical collar around his neck doesn't malfunction (in which case he will revert to being a cannibalistic brain-eating zombie). Fido is played, in a stroke of inspiration, by the Scots comedian Billy Connolly, although you wouldn't be able to recognize him without already knowing he's in the movie. Dylan Baker and especially Carrie-Anne Moss are just right as Timmy's parents, who have accidentally wandered out of a John Cheever novel and into a George Romero world. - Amazon.com
Oh man, this movie's got some good parts, but it just doesn't feel "done". Connelly, as Fido, doesn't say a word in his role but he makes Fido into a lovable figure, even though he's a rotting zombie. If a black comedy set in the 1950s with zombies and Carrie Ann Moss strikes your fancy, then I'd give it a shot, but otherwise there just isn't enough there to spend money on.
** out of *****
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 14:08:35 GMT -5
I never thought it was the MATRIX........because its better than THE MATRIX, and more interesting on a cerebral level. Instead of some nonsense of a prophecy or Ted Logan trying to kung fu, EQUILIBRIUM had some great action spots that are simply stunning. From Bale's fight in the dark to taking out everyone in little movement with gunfire....insane but incredible. Besides, I liked how Kurt Wimmer did alot with very little. Bay spent $120+ million for THE ISLAND, while Wimmer had peanuts, and made for a more interesting and alienating futuristic environment. Guess who made more out of their budget? Besides, it beats the MATRIX sequels, right? Like seeing the fake Spidey clamber across buildings in the first Spiderman, I think that's what irked me about Equilibrium... That first scene looked like a CGI Bale shooting in a pre-set pattern that reminded me a lot of a classic scene in The Boondock Saints and the line "WYATT-F***ING-EARP!" The fights, while good, just repeated themselves, especially the one scene where he's surrounded by the cops (the guys in the helmets) and he starts pistol whipping them. It looked like he was hitting them with Rob Van Dam style kicks, if you get my drift. As for beating the Matrix sequels... that's not a very hard thing to do... I'll still give it up for the original though...
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Post by Near Fantastica on Jan 10, 2008 14:12:14 GMT -5
Posted in the I Am Legend thread, but I'll throw it in here too;
Saw this last night with the girlfriend. Neither of us were too pumped about it, however all we'd heard was that a virus had wiped people out and Will Smith was the only person left and that he was alone on screen most of the time. WOW(!) we both though, this could be interesting, and it was. New York looked very bizarre and it was interesting to see him alone. I love movies that have famous locations completely empty, it always looks incredible.
This movie had the potential to be good, really good. It had the potential to be something different. It had the potential to be different, to stand out from the rest of the Hollywood crap, but...it failed.
The premise seemed good. The first...twenty minutes to half hour were really interesting. He had set up mannequins and spoke to them every day, he'd talk to the dog, he had to go out hunting for food and such, and if the whole movie had been Smith alone, it would've been very interesting. The girl and I were both saying how strange and amazing it'd be to watch a movie with just ONE actor, and one person who is left alive in the world, what they would do and how they would do it. THAT would've been a good movie. Would Hollywood surprise us?!!?
NO. It's a big f'in NO. Thirty minutes into the film, Smith chases deer and Sam follows it into a dark building. Why is Smith so worried I wondered? That scene was good though, until, he turns and sees four....creatures masturbating in the corner. "Oh Christ" was all I could say. The moment I lost my twelve bucks was when the first creature leaped at Smith with superhuman abilities and he shot at it. Damn. What a shame. Hollywood did it again. I realise it's based on a book, but you can easily change books when you're writing the screenplay, you can make a decent vampire/zombie/monster movie if you do it right and don't have CGI monsters jumping twelve feet into the air.
Speaking of CGI, CGI ruins movies. Why do they keep insisting on using CGI when it simply looks terrible? Jurassic Park still looks incredible and that was made in '93 before the boom of CGI. A lot of it was robotics and it looks amazing still to this day. The first thing I rolled my eyes at were the awful looking lions killed the deer. Terrible. However, I laughed out loud, both of us did when we see the monster properly for the first time at the door of that warehouse, screaming and burning. It looked AWFUL. It looked terrible. How could they have possibly watched that back and thought, "sweet, it looks great". They could've saved so much money and kept some realism to the movie by simply putting an actor or stuntman in some make-up. They're very capable and make-up these days can be amazing (Tom Savini etc.). They went cheap and relied on CGI. Terrible choice, and ruined the movie for me. The dogs looked terrible, the monsters looked terrible and I made fun of the movie for the rest of the time after they were introduced.
Smith was good. I really enjoyed his time alone on screen and I think he keeps getting better and better as an actor. It's just a shame that awful CGI and typical Hollywood explosions ruined what could've been something different. That big budget, closing down New York...all for this? Shame.
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Post by chibidiablo on Jan 10, 2008 14:14:09 GMT -5
Watching Enemy of the State now. It's smurfing great I liked ENEMY OF THE STATE. When it was called THE CONVERSATION. rra don't be that guy
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 14:15:44 GMT -5
I liked ENEMY OF THE STATE. When it was called THE CONVERSATION. rra don't be that guy I think that's part of the charm... He totally is that guy but embraces it...
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 15:29:06 GMT -5
I think that's part of the charm... He totally is that guy but embraces it... My problem with ENEMY OF THE STATE is the same one I have with Tony Scott outside of TRUE ROMANCE, THE HUNGER, REVENGE, and the decent CRIMSON TIDE/BEVERLY HILLS COP 2. Outside of those pictures, he's horsespit in my view. An over-the-top action-thriller director that at times could be good, but in recent years has been stuck in a pathetic midlife crisis, trying to rape his Avid editing machine more than guys decades than him. Besides, he shot TOP GUN. Enough said.
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 15:29:45 GMT -5
I liked ENEMY OF THE STATE. When it was called THE CONVERSATION. rra don't be that guy Sorry, I'm just being a smartass. But yeah, check out Coppola's CONVERSATION sometime. Excellent movie, and its not a Big Willy action vehicle.
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 17:33:05 GMT -5
I just got done watching this...
WALL STREET Everybody knows the movie... Michael Douglas is Gordon Gekko, possibly the greediest man in existence who uses a bunch of "back doors" to make millions on the stock market. He is also Buddy's (Charlie Sheen) hero. They hook up, make some money, make some enemies, and s*** goes down the toilet.
I really didn't like this movie. Just flat out, I didn't really enjoy it. Charlie Sheen made me want to punch him in the face, Martin Sheen's holier than thou father figure got annoying, and Darryl Hannah didn't even provide enough eye candy to accompany her wooden acting...
But goddamn if Michael Douglas wasn't awesome. The look, the motions, the voice, everything breathed "Gekko" and you hated him MORE for it. He carried this movie and, if filtered to just include Douglas' parts, would probably be a better movie. He deserved the Oscar he won for it.
Without Michael Douglas, the movie gets *1/2 out of *****
Speaking strictly on Michael Douglas, the movie gets ***1/2 out of *****
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rra
King Koopa
Posts: 10,145
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Post by rra on Jan 10, 2008 17:36:18 GMT -5
I just got done watching this... WALL STREETEverybody knows the movie... Michael Douglas is Gordon Gekko, possibly the greediest man in existence who uses a bunch of "back doors" to make millions on the stock market. He is also Buddy's (Charlie Sheen) hero. They hook up, make some money, make some enemies, and s*** goes down the toilet. I really didn't like this movie. Just flat out, I didn't really enjoy it. Charlie Sheen made me want to punch him in the face, Martin Sheen's holier than thou father figure got annoying, and Darryl Hannah didn't even provide enough eye candy to accompany her wooden acting... But goddamn if Michael Douglas wasn't awesome. The look, the motions, the voice, everything breathed "Gekko" and you hated him MORE for it. He carried this movie and, if filtered to just include Douglas' parts, would probably be a better movie. He deserved the Oscar he won for it. Without Michael Douglas, the movie gets *1/2 out of ***** Speaking strictly on Michael Douglas, the movie gets ***1/2 out of ***** I think WALL STREET is better than that....what's strange is, you have the EXACT same score I have for it, at ***1/2. But yeah, Darryl Hannah was awful...and even Oliver Stone admits he screwed up with that casting. The biggest problem of STREET for me is Stone's scriptwriting. He can be great, but at times he's prone to be melodramatic up the ass, and have his characters move the story by talking to themselves that is....sorta silly at times. For better or for worse, its a morality play. But indeed, its Douglas that makes this movie. He's the admirable evil greedy bastard that many on the street have modeled themselves after, or inspired by. Which really is a scary thought, if you think about it.
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 17:41:07 GMT -5
I think WALL STREET is better than that....what's strange is, you have the EXACT same score I have for it, at ***1/2. But yeah, Darryl Hannah was awful...and even Oliver Stone admits he screwed up with that casting. The biggest problem of STREET for me is Stone's scriptwriting. He can be great, but at times he's prone to be melodramatic up the ass, and have his characters move the story by talking to themselves that is....sorta silly at times. For better or for worse, its a morality play. But indeed, its Douglas that makes this movie. He's the admirable evil greedy bastard that many on the street have modeled themselves after, or inspired by. Which really is a scary thought, if you think about it. With the averages, I guess the movie as a whole would get **1/2 out of ***** from me... The part where Charlie Sheen is out on his patio and he asks, to no one in particular "Who am I?"... I just thought "Really? He had to ask that out loud? Couldn't it have been a face he was making or some cinematography?" Or the part where he was all "wasted" after he found out what Gekko was doing... So how do they show that he's wasted? By showing a half eaten box of pizza... Ugh... I just wish they would've cut out a lot of the Sheen/Hannah love story and concentrated more on Sheen/Douglas. I felt like they could've explained their relationship without all the scenes of them in bed, eating dinner, or just together in general...
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bigHEADinc
El Dandy
Wanted Conway Twitty as a special title.
lest we forget...
Posts: 7,711
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Post by bigHEADinc on Jan 10, 2008 18:19:12 GMT -5
One last one before I go home...
SMILEY FACE Smiley Face stars Anna Ferris as a stoner who gets the munchies and accidentally eats all of her roommates' hash cupcakes, effectively getting her wayyyyyyyy too high. When she's forced to replace the cupcakes, she can't make up enough scratch to pay her drug dealer (played by Adam Brody), so she ends up on a crazy misadventure to complete a list of tasks...
I'm a stoner, and I love Half-Baked, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, etc... But this movie was ridiculous... The jokes are half-assed and Anna Ferris' "High Girl" looked like she was trying to imitate Jim Breuer from Half-Baked... It had some good parts, but the sum isn't nearly as good as the parts...
*1/2 out of *****
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