Movie log thread

[Nyperold]

Well, I just watched Amélie (2001), starring Audrey Tautou and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Ignore the black mark on his record that is Alien Resurrection (if you consider it as such); this is actually a good movie. (It is rated R for sexual content (See other ratings at the IMDb), so however you feel about that... you are informed.

[Null]

The last movie I saw was the "Unrated Director's Cut" of From Beyond (1986). Whatever unreated directorial bits were added didn't really help; the movie remains a hit-or-miss hodgepodge of plot threads, and a missed opportunity.

[James]

Well, I just watched Amélie (2001), starring Audrey Tautou and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Ignore the black mark on his record that is Alien Resurrection (if you consider it as such); this is actually a good movie. (It is rated R for sexual content (See other ratings at the IMDb), so however you feel about that... you are informed.

I saw that. It was good, but I think my enjoyment of it was kind of marred by the fact that a friend of mine seemed to think it was the best film ever, so I was watching it waiting for whatever made it so spectacular. I guess it wasn't really my sort of thing, which makes it fairly impressive that I did quite like it.

Last weekend I saw Disturbia, which was worse than the review I heard on the radio made out, and 3:10 to Yuma, which was actually pretty good. It was strange to see a film in the cinema and part-way through realize, "Actually, this is a pretty good film." There were a couple of things I thought were kind of clichéd, but I had no major reservations, which is unusual. In a way it was even weirder than the rare occasion that I see something that really blows me away. It wasn't amazing, and it didn't reach out to me personally that much; it was just a good film. So unless I've got it completely wrong, it's a worthy watch if you're planning on making the trip anyway.

Other than that I recently saw 1408, which OK, although it failed to keep up the tension after the first hour or so. I think it would be pretty difficult to do so, and kind of exhausting to watch if it was constant, but it gives the viewer a bit of a break at some point (as these films generally do), and after that it never really picks up again. Still, other than it threatening us with something truly atrocious at one point, it was a perfectly endurable watch. High praise indeed.

Last night I watched The Butterfly Effect (not in the cinema, obviously), which was not particularly good. At first it had me kind of interested, and then it flirted with something shocking, then it wandered into the usual tiresome teen demographic tripe, and it kind of flitted between the three for the rest of its course. The general theme is very well-trodden, although the particular manifestation was slightly different than anything I was familiar with, which worked in its favour a little. It seemed a little confused or inconsistent with its moral messages: whilst most of the main characters' personalities are drastically changed by the hero's actions, leaving him desperately trying to find a solution satisfactory for all parties, the hero himself is stuck with one past, and whilst this contains experiences as terrible as the others', he seems to be much better equipped for moving on and adapting to all the different environments he creates; that said, in some of these environments he seems capable of reprehensible acts -- part of the message of the film seems to be that people are shaped by their experiences, and as such that's appropriate, but it didn't seem to give him the time to overcome these actions and what he'd become, yet he seemed to just switch back to being an OK guy, which left me feeling a little uncomfortable. Apart from that, it seems to switch from "don't play God" to "it's OK to play God as long as you make some sort of personal sacrifice". And then there's the whole issue of whether or not the hero destroys the timelines he leaves. If they are destroyed, he is effectively killing the entire population of the universe; if not, all he's doing is putting himself into a more palatable world and abandoning another one. It's an interesting moral problem, but in such a system it's pretty much impossible to have a positive moral outcome (if all possible things happen in some universe, all awful things happen and we all have awful counterparts; if there are no parallel universes, time travel could be said to be a kind of murder (although probably only by some kind of crazy moral pedant)), so I can't really blame the film for not tackling that one. And then there's this one character who's meant to be a psycho, but for much of the film he's a child, and I just didn't buy it. He was looking angry and swearing and hitting things, but it just looked funny.

So it wasn't very good, really. The basic premise was kind of interesting, but even that wasn't very well implemented.

[pitnyelder]

I watched a lousy Ashton Kutcher film

That must be the most detailed analysis of The Butterfly Effect ever written.

[James]

I sat through the whole bloody thing. I may have been playing Solitaire most of the time, but I still need to inflict the experience on someone else.

[Nik]

I sat through the whole bloody thing. I may have been playing Solitaire most of the time, but I still need to inflict the experience on someone else.

Did you see the director's cut? the ending scene is drastically different. I just wonder how that would affect your analysis of the movie as a whole. I agree with you on most of it. To me, it is one of those films that could have been great but fell short somewhere along the way. Monkeybone was another of those for me.

[James]

I saw the original cut. I read about some proposed endings, though. They didn't actually put the foetus suicide thing into the director's cut, did they? That probably would have improved my opinion of the film just for the bizarre offensiveness of it.

[Nik]

I saw the original cut. I read about some proposed endings, though. They didn't actually put the foetus suicide thing into the director's cut, did they? That probably would have improved my opinion of the film just for the bizarre offensiveness of it.

Yeah, that's the one I'm talking about.

[James]

You know what? I should have said "foetal suicide". That would have been so much better.

[Dusk]

Yeah.. Butterfly Effect had a couple of great scenes mixed with some really shoddy direction and scripting. I think there's a "straight to DVD" sequel or something.
I saw Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix last week and Gary Oldman nearly made me cry goddammit you bastard.

[kupo]

I LOVE Gary Oldman. ESPECIALLY as Sirius. I want to do him in the face.

[DarthCat]

Did you see the director's cut? the ending scene is drastically different. I just wonder how that would affect your analysis of the movie as a whole. I agree with you on most of it. To me, it is one of those films that could have been great but fell short somewhere along the way. Monkeybone was another of those for me.

We somehow justified watching Butterfly Effect in Psychology. I think I wanted those hours of my life back.

I saw about 2/3rds of Monkeybone a while back on Comedy Central - it seemed thoroughly chintzy and "low-budget", but I kinda liked it.

[Nyperold]

Well, after watching (Le Fabuleux destin d')Amélie( Poulain), I watched F.W. Murnau's Sunrise(: A Song of Two Humans). It's an interesting story, though one of the more interesting aspects of it was how expressionistic that one title card was. I don't think I've ever seen a title card do that. A close second was that when he called his wife as he searched for her in the lake area, you don't hear her name (it's not a talkie) and you don't even see his calling on a title card; what happens is, you heard a horn of some sort, possibly a trombone, which gives the impressing of calling. Hey, if that doesn't seem unusual, well, I've seen silent movies where music didn't even reflect the action at all. In Sunrise, it's only like that sometimes.

[Veepa]

I was up very late a few nights ago, and surfing through the vastness of satellite TV, when I eventually just gave up on finding anything on, so I just left it on some station.

Then a film called The Hunger came on, so I watched.. Quite a bizarre little film that I had never heard of before.

It starred some French actress, with a nearly intolerable accent, as a .. vampire I guess? Though, not in the traditional movie sense. It starts off with some weird shots of random lusty images intertwined with clips of some no name new-wave band performing music (The movie came out in 1983, after all.) Eventually you see the French vampire woman and none other than Mr. David Bowie. I think they were like in bed making out or something.. I don't know. And it shows the two of them "feeding" on others. Thought it's not a bite to the neck sort of thing. They each have this necklace with a golden ankh on it. And it somehow turns into a little blade, and they slit their victims neck with it. And then they show a splash of blood. But they don't actually show them drinking blood, I don't know... I wasn't really paying complete attention.

Anyway.. It's revealed to us that Frenchie is the original vampire, and she infected Ziggy Stardust a long time ago, thus giving him eternal life .. plus they are in love. And they have some girl who comes over for violin lessons. ... ... ... Anyway, all of the sudden Bowie starts having signs of aging. Oh wait! I forgot something. There's like two plots going on at once.. While all the previous gay poopcakes is going on, a young Susan Surandon plays some sort of doctor/scientist/made-up-person. They have a bunch of monkeys in cages... and in the beginning of the movie one of them goes crazy and maybe kills another monkey? And this crazy monkey is starting age at rapid paces. And Susan Surandon wrote a book about maintaining youth. And David Bowie is going bald. What the hell.

Aaaanyway... Davey is getting old really fast, and so is the monkey. I have no clue what that was about... I'm sure there was a point to having the monkey in there, but I think I was playing Clash at Demonhead on and off while I watched the movie. So... yeah. Bowie sees Surandon on TV promoting her book, and he's like "Holy crap, I'm old." So he goes up to her... location of employment.. where they keep monkeys in glass cages. By this time he looks like he's 60. And he tells Dr. Susan Surandon that he looked like a 30 year old man yesterday. She doesn't believe him.... So... wait a minute, I'm just describing the whole plot. Screw that.

So David Bowie dies, French Vampire is sad. Oh and also David Bowie fed on the little girl who came for violin lessons. Then French Vampire seduces Susan Surandon into a world of hot lesbian vampire action, and tries to make her David Bowie's replacement.

Then it really takes off!.... and becomes even more dull and plotless.

Good things about this movie: Lesbian scenes. Grandpa Bowie. I thought the violin girl was cool.

Bad things: Boring. Retarded editing. Screechy noises. Plot? They killed off the only cool character.

Would I watch it again?: Hell yeah!

[Nyperold]

So what you're saying is, this is a good bad movie? (Basically, a movie that is entertaining because of its badness, especially if you're not expecting something good.)

[fanelian]

I went to see a mexican movie to the theater almost a Month ago. The movie is based on a book by the guy who wrote the scripts for Babel and some other "high profile" movies by the same director. This writer adapted his book to make this movie, which was directed by I don't know who but it's not the same guy from the other movies.

It's called "El búfalo de la noche" or "The night buffalo" or something like that. I think the creative process went something like this:

"Oh, yeah, and the guy who came up with the crazy idea of a buffalo that breathes near you in the middle of the night, commited suicide because he was crazy. Who cares? Now let's see this girl peeing on this guy, that's so pivotal to the story..."

Really, the crowd started laughing in disbelief when the guy said "Take off your clothes" for the 4th time.

[Davidbowie]

3:10 to Yuma, which was actually pretty good. It was strange to see a film in the cinema and part-way through realize, "Actually, this is a pretty good film."

I had this exact reaction. I think the second half really was better, though, acting-wise.

[Dusk]

Veepa, I remember watching that movie at about 3am many years ago.
You definitely filled in some blanks for me.

[Veepa]

Veepa, I remember watching that movie at about 3am many years ago.
You definitely filled in some blanks for me.

So that's yet another obscure 80s movie we have seen in common..

The first one, of course, is a classic. But since it's our personal movie, we'll just tell people it's Nicole Kidman's finest.

[Dusk]

THREADSURRECTION
>picture<

So I've decided to catch up on all the movies I've missed over the last year or two or for all of time so far.
I plan to watch one at about 9.30pm every night until I get sick of it or start playing WoW again.
So far:
30 Days Of Night
Children Of Men
National Treasure 2
Be Kind Rewind
The Onion Movie

So far, 30 Days Of Night is winning despite the presence of Josh Hartnett and Melissa George's upper lip. I have high praise for that movie.

Any recommendations are welcome.

[Chrono Crow]

Last movie I saw was Juno. I really liked it, but the dialogue was too forced. Every line was witty or even downright pretentious. But it still made up for it with a good story and characters. Another flaw was that Jennifer Garner was in it. Not only do I just hate her, she looks like death on a bad day.

[Null]

I watched "Aliens vs Predator: Resurrection" the other day. Well, I say "watched" in the sense of "put it in the player and turned the TV on." I've never seen a movie as badly lit as this one.

What I could see was stupid in an almost alarming sense. And the movie overall was so bad it was depressing. I guess if you like the idea of babies being eaten, well, here's your film; otherwise I'd recommend you stay away and do something more entertaining and involving like taking a long nap.

[Zombie Protestor]

Did you watch Alien Resurrection, or Alien vs Predator: Requiem?

[Chrono Crow]

Did you watch Alien Resurrection, or Alien vs Predator: Requiem?

I got the two mixed up, too.

[Null]

Oops, it was the "Requiem" one, the one you play when something like a franchise has died.