Movie/TV recommendations

[Thyroid]

I saw Glengarry Glen Ross. David Mamet's dialogue isn't as wrong as the Coens', but the plot and the characters, plus superb casting, directing and acting, make this a damn fine movie. I guess it didn't explore all avenues it strikes up to the extent I want it to, but it doesn't detract from the movie. But, seriously, what a cast. Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, Alan Arkin, all at the top of their game and with such CHEMISTRY. GOD, I love it.

Anyways, yeah, excellent movie. Fans of Grim Fandango's storyline would especially enjoy.

[toblix]

Better late than never: Toy Story 3. Jesus Christ almighty, this was just fantastic! Pixar still manages to blow everything to shit with their skills – with the quality of the traditional aspects of story, script, performance, jokes, etc. you can count on them their films to be the best children's movie of whatever year, taking a huge crap on everyone trying to mimic them, but in the purely technical sense they're also so incredibly good! Each time they release a movie I'm blown even more away by the level of detail and care that has gone into every little thing. They manage to very successfully balance the narrow thing between too little happening on screen (because CGI is expensive and let's focus on the main characters) and too much (because HOLY SHIT WE'LL MAKE EVERYTHING HAPPEN WITH CGI!) The camera work is masterful, and everything's so delicately handled. They're mastering composition, coloring, focus and depth of field, optical artifacts, textures, shaders, character and facial animation, etc. with perfect ease, and just when you think they've mastered it all they master it even more with their next release! IT'S INCREDIBLE AND I'M ALL EXCITED!

Also, this movie had some of the best characters, like tortilla head and the crazy monkey. The only thing I hated about the movie was all the fuck shit Disney inc. ™ registered trademark trailers for every fucking Disney release in the next five years. Oh, how they manage to turn a prized possession into a piece of broken plastic I'd like to shove up the collective assholes of their no doubt enormous army of attorneys, lawyers and whatever else kind of human garbage that has convinced Disney that this is a good idea.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Haha! Excellent. It is a wonderful film! I bought it on Bluray and have watched it three times. It still holds up with each viewing. It really is brilliant.

I've heard it debated whether it's the greatest trilogy ever made. I can't think of another one that managed to remain that consistently good through all three films.

Glad you liked it

[Ben X]

I thought Toy Story 3 was dreadful (and 2 wasn't that good either). Out-of-place melodrama and disturbing dynamics amongst tired genre pastiches and sparse jokes.

On a positive note, Psychoville is back for a second series and just as amazing.

[Nappi]

If you ever have a chance to watch Lapland Odyssey (Napapiirin Sankarit), I heartily recommend you to do so. If only because I want to know what non-Finnish people think of the movie.

A guy, whose girlfriend is about to leave her because he can't get anything done, and two of his best friends embark on an epic journey to buy a digital-tv receiver on a Friday night Lapland to save the crumbling relationship. Full of depression and suicide references, as any self-respecting Finnish movie should be, but still very light-hearted. I liked it more than Rare Exports.

[Nevsky]

If you ever have a chance to watch Lapland Odyssey (Napapiirin Sankarit), I heartily recommend you to do so. If only because I want to know what non-Finnish people think of the movie.

I saw a trailer for that when I was in Finland last year. It looked to me like an Apatow rip-off, so I'm intrigued to hear it's good. Hopefully it'll be picked up for international distribution!

[Orv]

@: A few posts ago

The only thing I have ever taken away from the Toy Story movies is:

"You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity."

Everything else about it was relatively uninteresting.

[Nappi]

I found this discussion very interesting:

TpzJGNwJS7o

Which movies would you nominate? A friend of mine told me that Grave of the Fireflies is the saddest excellent movie he has ever seen. I haven't been in a mood to watch it yet.

My pick would definitely be Terry Gilliam's Tideland. Even though the movie is colorful and even cheerful to some extend, it had a very strong emotional effect on me as I have written before. I'm not sure if want to watch the movie ever again.

[Thyroid]

Haha! Excellent. It is a wonderful film! I bought it on Bluray and have watched it three times. It still holds up with each viewing. It really is brilliant.

I honestly didn't like it that much. OK, there was the whole tortilla thing and the Spanish scenes, and I liked how Andy found a solution to his toys problem at the end, and maybe the Totoro cameo raised a smile but overall I didn't like the third one that much. I'd be hard-pressed to remember anything about it.

That having been said, I'm excited for their (far) future. Henry Selick, who made James and the Giant Peach and the untouchable Coraline, has signed a long-term contract with Pixar to make stop-motion animation movies. It could be fun. I just hope it's not another run of sequels, like we're getting in the next couple of years.

[DanJW]

Which movies would you nominate? A friend of mine told me that Grave of the Fireflies is the saddest excellent movie he has ever seen. I haven't been in a mood to watch it yet.

Your friend is right about Grave of the Fireflies. You know you're in for a tough film when it opens with the child protagonist homeless and dying.

For me The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes close to being this. It's pretty good, but also brutal (the original title of the book was 'Men Who Hate Women")

Also Stalker. It's a long film and the tension build so slowly but inexorably that it just becomes too much. I can't watch it in a single sitting.

[vimes]

For me it's Audition from Takashi Miike. Good movie, but dammit I won't sit through the second half ever again.

[elmuerte]

Neo Tokio

Neat stuff, I really dig this style of animation. It's inline with the Heavy Metal stuff. Does anyone know other movies similar to this?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Requiem for a Dream was definitely one for me. Brilliant movie, but incredibly harrowing. I also felt pretty raw after I finished watching Trainspotting.

I found Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen) to be very uncomfortable, but also having moments of brilliance.

[Nappi]

Yeah, Requiem for a Dream would probably be one, if I hadn't forgotten most of it. As it is, I may have to watch it again.

The Proposition might fit the bill to some degree. It was definitely very disturbing and I will certainly not watch it again just because of that, but I'm still not sure how great it was.

[elmuerte]

Which movies would you nominate?

I'm dead inside. I cannot nominate anything, I have no emotional binding with movies whatsoever. It's entertainment.

But if I would play along the lines of possible unbearable movies, I'd nominate "Irreversible".

[ysbreker]

I just watched Tucker & Dale vs Evil. That movie is brilliant! A classic horror flick with all the standard tropes of that genre but such nice twist to it. Just so damn funny. :tup:

I also saw It's a kind of funny story. also excellent. A kid checks himself into a mental hospital and ends up on the adult ward with some rather special characters.

[edit] Whatever you do don't watch the trailer for tucker & dale vs evil. That trailer pretty much spoils the entire movie

[toblix]

Just watched the first episode of Walking Dead, and really liked it. It was particularly sweet the times the camera zoomed in mid-take.

[Ben X]

I just watched Tucker & Dale vs Evil. That movie is brilliant! A classic horror flick with all the standard tropes of that genre but such nice twist to it. Just so damn funny. :tup:

[plus others]

Really? From the trailer it looked like a one-joke movie. Huh.

I love Requiem For A Dream, I've watched it many times. There aren't many films I found too painful to watch again, but a few that I don't want to watch again in case the effect they had on me is softened with further viewings: Ju-On and The Devil's Rejects are two that spring to mind.

[Lu]

With Iron Man, Hulk and probably something I'm forgetting right now, Thor was probably the worst of the Marvel movies I have seen so far. To begin with, I wasn't that familiar with Thor as a character, besides the few times I've seen him in a couple of comics. I didn't exactly know who every character was to begin with, but was it just me or did it take like 20 minutes before they finally dropped Thor's brother's name? Probably some movie spoilers:

I was utterly confused as to what Loki's motivations were. What the fuck was his angle supposed to be? I get the feeling they tried to make him into a sympathetic villain, but failed miserably at it. Then, it seemed like Thor spent like 2 days with Natalie Portman, some heroic self-sacrifice later and he learned his great lesson where exactly? And the forced romantic stuff... Ugh.

All in all:

Edited May 8, 2011 by PiratePooAndHisBattleship

[vimes]

Neo Tokio

Neat stuff, I really dig this style of animation. It's inline with the Heavy Metal stuff. Does anyone know other movies similar to this?

You should check out Robot Carnivale and Memories, both of them are omnibus (collection of shorts) like Neo Tokyo and have a similar vibe.

I found Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen) to be very uncomfortable, but also having moments of brilliance.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of Allen's greatest movies - such a neatly constructed, well written movie with something interesting to say - and Martin Landau's and Woody Allen's character scene is brilliant.

[ThunderPeel2001]

With Iron Man, Hulk and probably something I'm forgetting right now, Thor was probably the worst of the Marvel movies I have seen so far. To begin with, I wasn't that familiar with Thor as a character, besides the few times I've seen him in a couple of comics. I didn't exactly know who every character was to begin with, but was it just me or did it take like 20 minutes before they finally dropped Thor's brother's name? Probably some movie spoilers:

I was utterly confused as to what Loki's motivations were. What the fuck was his angle supposed to be? I get the feeling they tried to make him into a sympathetic villain, but failed miserably at it. Then, it seemed like Thor spent like 2 days with Natalie Portman, some heroic self-sacrifice later and he learned his great lesson where exactly? And the forced romantic stuff... Ugh.

All in all:

Not sure why you didn't get it? Loki's story is pretty well told. (You know that Loki is the God of Mischief, right? If you didn't know that, they sort of tell you that you likes playing pranks.) So anyway...

Loki is jealous of his brother's popularity, and what he sees as his father's favouritism. (He's never considered for the throne.) After Thor is banished, his father reveals Loki's actually "adopted" (or rather stolen), and really a member of the "evil race" as far as everyone else in the entire kingdom is concerned. So now something snaps. He feels massively betrayed by his father for not telling him, on top of everything else he was already feeling.

He's angry and hurt, so he decides to take the role he feels he deserves. What's stopping him? Well his brother will probably eventually make his way back -- best take care of that, convincing him to stay exiled. Then his father will eventually wake up and reclaim the throne, so best have him killed.

Except, of course, Loki wasn't a total evil bastard, and when he saves his father from the frost giants, it's revealed that all he really wanted was his father's love and respect. With that in mind, he'd actually planned to betray the frost giants all along so he looked like the hero. That way, when his father awoke he'd gets everything: Love and respect from his father, no annoying brother around to steal his father's attentions, and being seem by everyone as a big hero (like Thor was), and then probably being "legitimately" awarded the throne when his father stepped down.

Of course, shit turns sour. More people become suspicious of him and his plans, and eventually Thor turns up to scupper his plans and with enough knowledge to reveal to everyone that Loki is an evil, twisted bastard. They fight and when they're both finally saved by their father, Loki can't take his father's disappointment and disapproval, and so he chooses "death" rather than be saved and live with the shame and self-loathing.

Also: Thor didn't learn his lesson from his romance with Natalie Portman at all. Not sure why you'd think he did. He learnt it from being told by his brother that he'd caused his father's death, that the entire kingdom now hated him and blamed him for the war, and that his own mother apparently blamed him too, and had permanently disowned him. Not only that, but if he tried to return, he'd spark another war. That, and the fact that he was no longer a super-hero, and was going to stay as human forever, pretty much humbled him (as shown by his discussion in the bar). He only started to connect with Portman on any level after he had this change.

Plus, in the whole movie they never revealed their love for each other, they never even kissed. At the end of the film, the "romance" was nothing more than the promise of romance.

Finally, he made the supreme sacrifice because, well, he didn't really have a choice. For a start, his actions had already caused the near destruction of one world, so probably wasn't about to let that happen again. But also: He couldn't actually fight, even if he wanted to. Having no powers he was completely reliant on his super-hero friends to do the fighting for him. When it was clear they were more likely to get killed than win, that didn't really leave him with much of a choice. Either be a selfish bastard and possibly get your friends killed, destroy another planet, along with the new friends you've just made -- or throw yourself to your brother's mercy and hope he's not quite as evil as everyone is telling you he is.

[Sno]

Watched The Fly yesterday. Disturbing stuff.

David Cronenberg is a master of body horror.

If you feel like having your mind further defiled, i would recommend Videodrome.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of Allen's greatest movies - such a neatly constructed, well written movie with something interesting to say - and Martin Landau's and Woody Allen's character scene is brilliant.

It's a great movie in lots of ways, masterful even, but it's also flawed. The best stuff is Landau and Houston. (WOW, that stuff is POTENT. REALLY powerful stuff.) The weakest stuff is Allen moaning about the girl he likes, and the priest losing his eye-sight. My main problem with it, though: It's fucking painfully depressing to watch (which is why I mentioned it).

The film's conclusion: Life is unfair, unjust and completely without meaning. Despite this some people manage to struggle on to find some semblance of happiness. (A cheery message delivered by the character who couldn't find happiness and committed suicide.)

[Roderick]

I crawled my way through Bunny and the Bull just then. Even though it was made by the director of The Mighty Boosh and had guest roles for Julian and Noel my expectations weren't high -still it disappointed. A tedious film, filled with unlikeable characters

[DanJW]

I went to see Attack the Block earlier this evening. I thought it was a really fun film. It's fairly short, so some of the themes and characters aren't developed as much as would have been nice. In the early parts of the movie some of the story-telling feels a bit rushed.

But it's just got so much warmth and hits all the right notes. It's a proper classic schlock scifi monster movie like The Thing, Predator and Tremors. Like the latter it has a good balance of humour, scares, action and gore - just as Thunderpeel noted earlier.

The setting is nice. Most folks who have been teenagers in Britain in the last 30 years can relate to the main cast I think. And if you live around that current teen culture then you've probably picked up a lot by osmosis (there were only a couple of lines in all that I didn't catch). I've never lived on an estate but I felt familiar with them and their world pretty quickly. The soundtrack was also perfectly suited.

Good monster design too, with nods to the genre anchorpoints like Alien (lots of other references in the movie too, like 'Wyndham Tower') whilst still being effectively menacing and different enough to not seem like a rip-off.

I really want to watch it again, if just for the last

slow-motion

action sequence, which I think is near-perfectly shot and may well go down as a classic moment for many years.

Edited May 9, 2011 by DanJW