ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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Just went to see There Will Be Blood in the local film house and it was terrific. Especially the brooding music is so all-encompassing that you're sucked in right away. The opening scene alone is worth going for. It's a long ride, but full of wonderful stuff!

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Just went to see There Will Be Blood in the local film house and it was terrific. Especially the brooding music is so all-encompassing that you're sucked in right away. The opening scene alone is worth going for. It's a long ride, but full of wonderful stuff!

Saw this too last week, it's an amazing film. People told me that it was very similar to No Country For Old Men, but I found them quite different. No Country seemed more open to interpretation, but There Will Be Blood is like a clockwork film, everything slotting together beautifully.

I especially liked the way it revealed that he wasn't really "descending into madness" as some synopses state, but that he'd always been a horrible, manipulative, psychopathic person, with circumstance changing the way he expressed it.

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I think it's because of the Oscars, because whenever I mention There Will Be Blood, people mention No Country. I'll watch that too, but it is already less good because it doesn't have Blood in the title.

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Just spent some time on tanscontinental flights (over 40 hours in last 4 months) and watched some godawful films:

27 dresses - Pointless chick flick trash with awful acting and drivel for dialogue

The Condemned - A bad Battle Royale rip off with Stone Cold Steve Austin, you know you are screwed when you leave the acting duties to Vinnie Jones

Dan in Real Life - Starts off sort of entertaining and then immediately loses it with everyone being rather embarassing and over the top. Steve Karell is on particularly annoying form.

Fever Pitch - If you don't mind Drew Barrymore being awful in a misfired romantic comedy about a guy who has to choose between baseball or his girlfriend it's great. As long as you can put up with a charmless male lead and predictable plot 'twists'

30 days of night - Visually quite good and Josh Hartnett is okay. Sadly the subject material is rather slim and so the plot falls back on too many horror cliches. Almost worth watching if you don't watch a lot of horror stuff but films like Pitch Black are far superior in terms of pacing and acting.

Jumper - Hayden Christensen is rubbish don't watch his films. Ever.

St. Trinians - Changes the original anarchic films into some kind of wacky teen drama with a dash of pygmallion. Rupert Everett is pretty good as the lead barmy head mistress but everyone is a waste of cinema.

On the other hand:

I am Legend - Has more in common with Omega Man than the original book but is a lot better than I expected. I still want to see some one try and tackle the original text with a little more faithfulness

Shoot-em-up - Ridiculous with some rather entertaining set pieces. Monica Bellucci is pretty bad but everyone else made me smile (+ the promotion of eating carrots being a cool thing gets my vote).

American Gangster - It has been done so many times, a gangster epic that spans decades. Russel Crowe and Denzel Washington are both compelling and Ridley Scott is a solid director, if you have over 2 and half hours to blow there are much worse things to watch.

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I have loaded The Darjeeling Limited onto my PSP for my imminent train journey; will report back in due course.

Have been watching Firefly with Mrs V this last week and man alive... WHY didn't I start watching this sooner?! Utterly captivating. :getmecoat

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Ah yes, Firefly... :tup:

I watched Jumper too, a few days back, and it was sooooo horrible. Just... so... childish and juvenile in its portrayal of what could possibly have been a relatively interesting idea. Darth Vader is horrible in it, and the movie as a whole has the same problem Transformers had: there isn't a single sympathetic character in it. You hate them all, you wish all of them bad things. And then that last bit

where the guy stands in front of his mother and they just blatantly, needlessly put out the premise there: I am a jumper and you are a paladin. Oh god, that's the worst bit of storytelling/exposition I've seen in a decade. Pure trash.

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It is based on a book trilogy and I wonder what they are like.

Jumper just had so many potentially good moments that are largely ruined by the leads. I also hate the fact that it fails to tie up any of the threads that it starts.

I don't think this film deserves having spoiler tags on it, I don't think that it could be ruined by knowing what happens. Jamie Bell, to be fair, does actually try and be entertaining.

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I just came back from Iron Man. It's great; it's basically one big origin story. The film is absolutely carried by the charismatic Robert Downey Jr (and the special effects). He plays Iron Man with such enthusiasm and pleasure, great to see.

The storyline wasn't that epic though, unfortunately. They really focussed on the creation of the character, so the 'enemy' wasn't given too much consideration in the movie. I expect great, world-threatening things of the sure-to-come sequel!

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I think I can confidently say that Firefly is in my favorite television show, let alone sci-fi franchise. Is this your first time going through it? I Just started re-watching the series a week or so ago and it's the kind of show that literally gets better the second time you watch it, since you know all the characters and plot twists in advance and can both understand the characters motivations and pick up on the incredible examples of foreshadowing (I've heard all of Joss' arcs are planned episodes in advance).

I though I Am Legend was good. It reminded me of 28 Days Later, but as soon as I made that comparison, I couldn't stop thinking about how much better 28 Days Later was. I'm the kind of person that either loves a movie or tears it apart. For example, I was enthralled with Sunshine to the point where I didn't even mind that the last 20 minutes turned into a ridiculous slashed movie. People complained a lot about that movie when it first came out, but when you get down to it, the visual style of Danny Boyle is so utterly inspired that any minor plot issues couldn't stop his films from being infinitely more interesting than the clones and mindless blockbusters Hollywood is churning out. Besides maybe Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, I can't think of many directors who treat film as an art and really make much of an attempt at visual innovation. I'm rambling, but this is how I get when I like a movie.

On the other hand, I saw The Forbidden Kingdom last weekend and was really disappointed. It wasn't what I expected, but I almost wanted it to be just another Crouching Tiger, House of Flying Daggers, or Hero. Those are all incredible movies, all wonderfully tragic and poetic, and all period pieces of incredible depth. The Forbidden Kingdom was shallow and utterly unappreciative of the culture it was trying to emulate. On one hand, I feel as though its intention was to pay homage to movies like Crouching Tiger and older martial arts epics, but it was so utterly Western that I couldn't take it seriously on any level. The hero, fighting for some staff of destiny, was a kid named Jason who gets knocked out, wakes up in ancient China, and must learn to fight to protect an ancient destiny, or something: It was riddled with American cliches like that.

And it has a happy ending.

But I was really impressed with Sunshine. If you haven't seen it yet, watch it, even just for the art direction. Danny Boyle's an interesting director because even though I know people who dislike sci-fi and (in the case of 28 Days Later) despise horror, I find myself recommending his films to almost everyone regardless based on the beauty of the films alone.

The scene in 28 Days Later on the roof of the apartment with the hundreds of brightly colored buckets against the bleak post-apocalyptic skyline was stunning.

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I liked Sunshine until the plot became intolerable. I can't bear watch it again. I feel offended and let down.

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I just came back from Iron Man. It's great; it's basically one big origin story. The film is absolutely carried by the charismatic Robert Downey Jr (and the special effects). He plays Iron Man with such enthusiasm and pleasure, great to see.

Cheers, Rodi. Brilliant!

It's out here in the UK today, but I'm not able to make it tonight. So planning to go next week with a friend or two.

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Cheers! Excellent link.

Just watched 'Man on Fire' on the television, I highly recommend it. Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning and Radha Mitchell are all great. I was expecting tedium and found myself utterly gripped all the way through.

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As I mentioned earlier in the week, I was planning to watch The Darjeeling Limited. And whilst I watched almost all of it on the train (appropriately enough), I still had 20 minutes left when I reached Paddington. Then I talked a very nice Taiwanese PHD student's ear off on the return journey.

So I finished watching it today and, well, it's just so... :tmeh:

I just don't get what the film's trying to achieve, beyond vague mysticism through deliberately obscure plot development and (admittedly lovely) artsy camera shots.

Sure, the fulcrum of the story (i.e. rescuing two of the three young boys from the river) works in and of itself, but so much else is just tinsel.

An odd film; no shortage of potential in cast, setting and overall plot, wasted by a frustrating script, tethered to a story which seems almost directionless for several - occasionally unnecessary - scenes at a time.

And it's not like you can say, "well, that's just so you can enjoy the culture and scenery." Because you actually get to see pretty much fuck all of what India is like; none of the temples and their amazing gardens (except for some pokey interior shots), the street life, and only really a smattering of the country side--which comes off as implying the whole place is one big, endless dust bowl anyway (definitely not accurate).

So I'm at a loss. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention..? :getmecoat

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It is a strange one Wrestle. I liked it, but as not much as Andersons previous films (Tenenbaums remains my favourite). I think I'm going to have to watch it again, to see if there's some kind of subtle pattern in there. It feels like there ought to be. Even more than the previous films, it's like an art house movie, a very cryptic mood-piece.

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I agree with both of you. I saw it on the plane to GDC, and it was lovable, but pretty forgettable. Like a diluted version of The Royal Tenenbaums. I liked it as entertainment (particularly the late shot moving from imaginary train compartment to imaginary train compartment), but nothing about it has really stayed with me or affected me.

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I saw Transformers last week, which was exactly as shit as I expected it to be. Normally I wouldn't be able to stand more than 10 minutes of this crap, but fortunately I was watching it with Rifftrax on, which made it totally hilarious and awesome. :tup:

Then I saw Cloverfield with Rifftrax, which was also great. It's always great when these guys pick something to be a running joke for the entire movie and in this case they really pick Hud constantly going "dude, dude.... dude, bro! bro, hey man, dude", which eventually becomes quite rofl-worthy.

I'm now watching Jurassic Park with Rifftrax, which has Weird Al Yankovich as a guest riffer, and so far it's incredible.

"Assume the winded fanboy position!"

In conclusion: Rifftrax.

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As I mentioned earlier in the week, I was planning to watch The Darjeeling Limited. And whilst I watched almost all of it on the train (appropriately enough)...

So I finished watching it today and, well, it's just so... :tmeh:

I just don't get what the film's trying to achieve, beyond vague mysticism through deliberately obscure plot development and (admittedly lovely) artsy camera shots...

So I'm at a loss. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention..? :getmecoat

For me that was the point, the characters as well as the audience all spent time looking for some higher meaning, more depth to what was being said. The constant anti-climaxes and the way in which the brothers walked away with very little to show for it hit a nerve for me. If have nothing to start with then trying to find spiritual enlightment really isn't going to work.

Although not my favoutite I really liked Darjeeling for its jarring, weirdly paced plot.

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If have nothing to start with then trying to find spiritual enlightment really isn't going to work.

Oh no question--the whole estrangement and 'itinerary' mix definitely worked. :tup:

I just think there would've been no harm in pushing things a bit further; there were shades of Tenebaums in there (a film Mrs V and I really liked btw), but Darjeeling was missing the details to make it really stick in your mind afterwards.

Oh well. We're going to watch There Will Be Blood tonight, hopefully. I'm also planning to see Iron Man later this week with a friend.

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I cannot stand Rifftrax, Mystery Theatre, any of that stuff. It's like trying to watch a film with an unfunny, irritating person yelling obvious jokes in your ear constantly.

Am I alone?

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