Recent movies seen
 

Well, big R and I are consummating our recent Netflix membership and I'm finally catching up on my movies, so I recommend....

The Aviator - Beautiful cinematography; straightforward, vanilla direction by Martin Scorcese; performance by Cat Blanchett of the legendary Kate Hepburn worthy of the Oscar she won for it; Leo diCaprio, despite his nice enough performance, was really badly miscast as Howard Hughes - he just doesn't possess the chiseled good looks, stature, and charisma (he's too damn young looking for the part!); Kate Beckingsale as Ava Gardner is pathetic, and more so Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow.

Babette's Feast - Easily among my favourites of all time. This is an homage to humanistic sacrifice and the power of art to elevate the soul. To lump it as merely a 'food film' is to be stupid, it soars far beyond that.

Tampopo - Japanese director Juzo Itami's social commentary and satire on various fascinations, obsessions, and symbolisms on food. A widowed mother undertakes a near impossible quest to make the perfect bowl of ramen noodles, thus recruiting a ragtag band of gourmet chefs and gourmands to help her out. It's on my list of all time favourites as well, and is still as funny and sensually provocative as ever since I first saw it well over ten years ago.

We need to fill in our queues some more. We got Spirited Away and Million Dollar Baby waiting. Does anyone recommend anything else?

Trep, I'm afraid I have nothing yet to add, but I am interested in this thread as I just this week got my first films from Netflix. I am woefully behind on movies, so I have much catching up to do.

Lynsie

:D Welcome to the 21st century of movie renting. Netflix boasts over 45,000 titles, so you'll definitely be busy for a while.

I've just seen Spanglish, which was better than it had any right to be. I've got The Life Aquatic to watch, too... and also saw Steamboy, which was great, and Kung Fu Hustle, which was superb.

Ooh, one of my fave films recently was Zatoichi. Great, absurd, art/comedy/samurai film from Takeshi Kitano.

I just remembered, I got House Of Flying Daggers on queue as well.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest for the first time in years. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! :9~


Salo... Not. :D

Can you please explain to me how netflicks works. Do you pay per movie? or weekly/monthly/yearly? I assume you download the movies, if so how big are the files? how fast are the download speeds? Thanks in advance.

Glenn, Netflix is not a DL service. It's a DVD rental via snail mail. They actually mail you a physical DVD. There is a monthly fee. Once you pick your movies, they mail the DVDs to you. When you return the DVDs, they they ship out the next DVDs that you selected and placed in the rental queue. I love Netflix because it bay far has the best and biggest foreign movie selections of any major service.

I really didn't get House of Flying Daggers...

Spoiler:

the love triangle was overdone, the fighting repetitive, the strings showing and what's with the constant attempted raping on the ground? That scene is in the movie like three times. The ending I thought was an exercise in futility. The scene with the drums in the beginning is great but after that it just goes downhill completely. "Are you for real?" she asks. Crappy translation or crappy dialogue... who knows? :shifty:

I much prefer Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Some films I recommend though (don't know if you've seen these): Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Les Visiteurs (hilarious French comedy)... and kinda new but also Madagascar and Batman Begins. Are they out of cinemas yet where you are?

A good Swedish film btw is "****ing Åmål" directed by Lukas Moodyson. It was released under the lame title "Show me love" in the US, I believe. On that note, "Jägarna" is pretty damn good too.

Just saw Donnie Darko for the fourth or fifth time. Anyone watched the director's cut? Which one do you prefer?

City of God - A powerful movie. It does feature some brutal scenes so City of God is not a movie you want to see when you feel like getting warm and cozy. Don't let that discourage you though, it's as beautiful as it is violent and brutal. Some people called it Brazilian Goodfellas and I for one think that this is even better than Goodfellas. One of the Netflix reviewers said how physically beautiful people look and I have to agree with her. There are so many gorgeous people featured in the movie, you almost want to move to Brazil!


Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, ... and Spring - One of the most beautifully shot and framed movies that I have seen in years. It's a Korean movie, and I must say that at the end of the movie, I felt proud that Korean movie industry is now capable of producing classics. You would get more out of the movie if you are familiar with the basic concepts of the Buddhism and Asian sentiments, but even if you don't, you will be moved by natural and spiritual beauty that the movie presents. You might also want to check out another Korean masterpiece with Buddhist theme, Why has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East?.

Haven't yet, but am going to see Madagaskar today :D

Actually, yeah... that's a great film.

So glad I'm not the only one who thinks Flying Daggers was overhyped. I completely agree, you found the same problems with it as I.

Spoiler:

But you missed out the comedy fight at the end where they repeatedly hit eachother like a scene from Vic and Bob.

:D

I've seen all the films you mentioned Trep (what kind of film buff would I be otherwise?), and frankly I just can't wait to hear your thoughts on Million Dollar Baby. It's not that Tampopo and Babette's Feast aren't worth discussing, it's just that I've discussed them many times over the years already. Update me when you see Million Dollar Baby. If the film doesn't move you, then I'm not sure you have a pulse. :P

By the way gilly, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring was my favorite film of last year (even though it was made in 2003, the states didn't get a release until 2004). City of God was also very good.

I don't know anything about this netfix thingie, cos I'm really half the globe away from most of you guys here. A nice show I did watch last year was Collateral. The actions' so-so, but the conversation are rather interesting, touching aspects of existentialism and even a bit of I-ching. Definitely recommended if you'd yet to watch it.

Yes! Collateral was a great surprise. I expected a slick Michael Mann actioner, but what I got was a rather intelligent film with some action scenes.

I love the show really, for I'm no action lover. Thought I was going into the theater to watch a thriller, well at least thwt was the preconceptions I'd held from the trailer. Boy! Was I surprise to find little mystery, little action, and a lot of deep thoughts!

Net flix is awesome. Every few months or so I sign up, rent a bunch of dvds, burn the......er.....watch them, and send them right back out. Lately, i've been buying dvds at flea markets for $5 a pop, and i've recently seen Timeline, which isn't nearly as bad as most critics make it out to be, because it's just a fun movie. Watership Down is pretty good as well, but watch it before you read the book. Whenever I read a book before I see a movie, the movie seems like it's rushing to fit things in to a smaller time frame. Speaking of which, the Count of Monte Cristo is a good movie as well. It's a lot different than the book, but good in its own right.

Right now, i'm just trying to work my way through The Dead Zone...man, great show.

Trep, since you asked about recommendations I would need to know if you and/or big R have any limitations imposed at all in your film viewing. You probably don't, but I just have to ask because I run into people all the time who won't watch anything made before 1970 or that may be in black and white. Do any of these things apply to you? Until I know the answer to that, I can recommend two movies off the top of my head that are modern, wonderful, and have excellent Criterion DVD editions (you may have already seen these):

1. Do the Right Thing - Easily Spike Lee's best film (no contest really). Just don't judge it during the cheesy opening credits, it's a brilliant movie.

2. Short Cuts - A great Robert Altman film (it inspired Magnolia, another great movie) from the mid-90s that weaves together the stories of about 20 characters from all walks of life.

And, you get to see Julianne Moore's firery red bush in it.

Ah yes scars... Did you know Altman has revealed that Julianne Moore actually called him about the part, insisting she had no problem with the full frontal nudity in the scene...and at the end of the conversation she said, "Oh and by the way Bob...I'm a natural redhead." LOL.

Spoken like a true connoisseur, Tempsie.

More from me.

Manhattan - IMO, Manhattan is easily Woody Allen's best movie. Even though the film is in B&W, NYC is lovingly presented in the film and you can tell that Woody Allen adores New York. The movie's also very funny, intelligent, and features sparkling dialogue. It's a true demonstration of how great of a writer Woody Allen is when he's on. He won the awards with Annie Hall but Manhattan is better in my book. I wish they could have waited a bit and gave him awards for Manhattan. I have a penchant for romantic comedy and Manhattan is by far the best romantic comedy ever created. There's the whole thing about Woody Allen's character, whose name is Isaac (you can't imagine a more fitting name for a NY Jew than Isaac!), having an affair with a 17 year-old girl. Don't let that distract you though, Manhattan is intelligent, funny, romantic. and beautiful all at once.

Finding Never Land - It was nominated for 7 Oscars and I for one think that all of the nominations were much deserved. This movie established Johnny Deep as the most prominent actor of his generation. Kate Winglet and Radha Mitchell also turn in a good performance. It really is fascinating and touching to see how JM Barrie's relationship with Kate Winslet's character's four young sons inspires the creation of timeless classic like Peter Pan. A real winner.

Good call on Manhattan gilly...I was waiting for trep's reply before recommending any black and whites, but that's a great recommendation. Even if I am a bit partial to Annie Hall as Allen's best myself. :P Can't go wrong with Crimes and Misdemeanors or Hannah and Her Sisters either.

Annie Hall is awesome. Worth the rental for the cinema queue scene alone.

Also a good film...

Another one from me.

The Motorcycle Diaries - A young Che Guevara on motorcycle, how can you beat that? Excellent film, showing a young idealistic medical student traveling across South America on a motorcycle with his friend. You can see how meeting and interacting with poor common people who are suffering and being abused slowly affecting a young idealistic man. I wished very hard as I watched the movie that I too had the chance to travel the world and discover how the world works and how it should work when I was his age. Oh and Gael Garcia Bernal who plays Che is magnificent in the movie and looks quite hot to boot.

^Agreed. Motorcycle Diaries is an amazing picture.

Theatrical because I don't like some of the changes to the audio. Some of my favorite stuff were different queues and little moments with sound and it's all different in the other cut. I also don't like Frank's new voice. I like the director's cut and own both version, but I still prefer the older one.

Yesterday I saw American Psycho for the first time. I just saw it as a statement that, in the 80's, provided you had the right clothes, listened to the right music, went to the right restaurants, and hung out in the right circles, indeed you could get away with murder.

I love Netflix!

We just returned “Montenegro,” a film in English, directed by Yugoslavian director, Dusan Makevejev. Had to see it because the director had taught a class my fiancé had taken in college, but I found it to be pretty disappointing. I agreed with one reviewer who found the portrayal of the immigrants to be clichéd and the “boring” Swedish husband, his wife, and family to be far more interesting. I mean who wouldn’t want to know more about the pistol-packing grandpa in a wheelchair who interviews potential wives by having them do the rumba in his living room? Besides if I wanted to sit through another story about bored housewives, I’d reread Madame Bovary.

Next up in the queue: The Aviator, Garden State, and Chicago.

I'd second the recommendations for Manhattan and Annie Hall. I also loved Bananas and Sleeper (of course not as polished as his later movies, they're also less pretensious in some ways and generally pretty danged hilarious).

Paperhouse, a beautiful, sad little movie. Also one of the scariest films I've ever seen. You think Silent Hill was creepy? Well think again.

I'm not sure if this was aimed at children, but I know that if I saw this as a kid, I would've shat my pants.

It reminds me of Gaiman's Coraline a little, which is apparently also being made into a movie.

I saw the theatrical release a couple of years ago & LOVED it. I watched the director's cut a few months ago & don't think it was quite as good. Either way, it's a great movie.

Netflix is a good thing. Scott brought me the 1st season of HBO's OZ a few weeks ago & I got hooked. Today I watched the 1st 3 episodes of Season 5. Two more disks to go then I get to see Open Your Eyes to see how it compares to Vanilla Sky. I love Penelope Cruz. Tom Cruise I can do without.

I saw it as a kid, ha ha. I don't remember it very well, but I do remember it was quite creepy. I remember I actually rented it AGAIN so I must have wanted to scare one of my friends. Heh.

Who really cares?
It was an ok film, but not really worth raving about :D

Oh yes! A priceless movie. I have it on dvd. :D There was an American remake recently, with the same duo of French actors, called "Just Visiting", which wasn't as good. I think Americans would be surprised how many of their movies are bad remakes of French cinema. :P

Well, Taxi and Jungle to Jungle (actually not bad) spring to mind, but I'm sure there are more.:crazy:

I tried to explain this to my uncle a few years ago, during the "Freedom Fries" crap... His response was: "Well, Americans invented the airplane!" :frusty:

Of course, it's not just French films... We steal films from every country. Lately the biggest one is Japan.

Your uncle must have never heard of a certain Monsieur Bleriot. The race to perfect a successful self-powered heavier-than-air aircraft was very close.

ScottMate

Trep, gotta disagree with you about Scorsese's directing on The Aviator, but I'll agree with you on Leo, though I didn't really mind. His accent got to me at first but I bought him as Hughes pretty easly on in the film. I generally loved the Aviator though.


I've been majorly Summering it up in movie land lately.

I guess you guys know what I thought of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I just saw the Fantastic Four tonight :shifty:, and I was really surprised to find that I was entertained the whole time through. I've never read a Fantastic Four comic though, and had very low expectations.

I saw Batman Begins twice, because it was good. Not perfect, but very enjoyable. Especially liked the last 3 minutes, with Gordon and Batman hanging out talking by the bat signal. Nice to see a comic book movie adknowledge the post 80's attitudes about the relations between superheroes, villains, and the cities they're 'protecting,' even though the film just gave it passing mention.

Mr and Mrs Smith made me want to leave the theater. It depressed me how forced and trite the "marriage counselor" scenes were, but people in the audience seemed to buy them as genuinely unique and hilarious. I also got tired of them blowing up kitchens and bedrooms pretty fast, and was extremely depressed when the movie revealed that it's way of "amping it up" in the second half was to have the characters blow up a kitchen and bedroom store. Good lord.

War of the Worlds impressed me only because I was actually feeling tense, especially during the middle part. It was the same "only with Spielberg" feeling I got when I saw Jurassic Park for the first time, resulting in me sleeping on my brothers floor that night because it had spooked me out so bad (Man how good is that stuff with the T-Rex at night in the rain early in the film? Holy crap. *swoon*). Even though the ending was vaguely taken from the original story, I thought it was handled badly. I wish they would have shown the reprecussions a bit more. Maybe that's for the sequel, which I hope is called Warer of the Worldser: They're still already here.

The Longest Yard was shit. My feelings on Adam Sandler are mixed but he clearly phoned in this entire film. In Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, he was genuinely good at taking the piss out of all of the fake bullshit characters, plot moments, and quips in hollywood stories (stuff like the clown at the party falling over and bleeding on the pavement, and lines like 'you eat pieces of shit for breakfast' come to mind), but in this movie they just all slide by without notice or comment, as genuine characters, quips, and story points. Ugh. Chris Rock even showed Adam Sandler a picture of his wife/girlfriend/whatever and told him how he was going to see her when he got out of prison, and then was burned to death like 2 scenes later. This passed without comment from anyone, despite being the shittiest oldest trick in the hollywood storytelling book. Ugh.

I think I saw a couple other notable movies but have forgotten them. Oh I saw Crash which I enjoyed but don't have much to say about it. Million Dollar Baby's goddamn descent into madness tired me out. Yeah cool it took an abrupt right turn from the standard sports movie fare, but PLEASE, people, it wasn't that original or gripping or special. Actually it was kind of "special," but only if you put an "after" and "school" before it. I don't feel the movie at all earned the right in its first 2/3 to make the extreme turn it made in the end. I liked the lighting and general extreme use of black and dark areas as far as the overall look of the film was concerned, though. Howl's Moving Castle was very fun aside from the last stupid 2 minutes.

It's weird how many hollywood movies I've watched lately. I mean, I'm not averse to Hollywood movies - I watch a lot of them - but usually there are plenty of funky things thrown into the mix. At the beginning of the summer I was mixing it up a bit more, and was for some reason a little hawks/hitchcock/noir stir-crazy. Seen earlier:



- The Big Sleep (not as good as the book - the DVD had two cuts of the film, and I watched both... neither edit was all that great to be honest, despite being somewhat entertaining. Neither Howard Hawks or Bogart were at the top of their game with this, which is too bad given the cool source material),

- Suspicion (which was recommended to me as good, but I was only moderately into it... the ending... wtf?),

... And re-watched

- His Girl Friday (so so good. if you havent seen this but enjoy or tolerate old movies, you owe it to yourself to pick this up)

- and the restored cut of Touch of Evil (ditto on the watching this if you haven't seen it. my brain explodes at it's awesomeness even with Charlton Heston playing a Mexican - fat cigar-chompin Orson Welles destroys all)

... and some others which I've now forgotten about.

I'm currently trying to watch the first 3 Romero zombie movies but I hardly have time... Going to the theater is sort of its own thing that's easy to block off and do, but when it comes to watching a DVD in my apartment, I always find other things that I need to do instead of sit in front of my own TV. Weird.

Anyway, I am about 3/4 through Night of the Living Dead and I really like it. I was surprised at how good it is despite being extremely bad. The characters feel real despite their hilarious flatness. Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead are next up in the Netflix queue.





... whoa wrote more than i meant to. hi

That Just Visiting remake was appalling. The only vaguely amusing scene was when he walked into the bar in full medieval gear and asked about I don't remember what. Taxi has got to be the worst remake ever though. I only watched the trailer, but oh how I cringed...

- there should be a shuddering smiley -

The Longest Yard as far as I can tell is also a remake... of a British film about a footballer (that's soccer) who gets sent to jail and then takes on the guards in a game.


How is that American remakes almost invariably manage to copy only the most superficial attributes and forget everything that actually matters?