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The last film you saw -- and what would you grade it


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Bad Ronald

 

B+

 

Pretty cool tv movie from the 70's where this misfit kid accidentally kills a girl which then leads to his mother making a secret room in their house for him to hide out in. Somewhat creepy , but could have gone much farther. Still giving it a B+ for the premise. Not a big fan of remakes, but this would be a good one to redo.

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I, Frankenstein

 

D-

 

I had relatively high hopes for this movie. I knew it'd never be good good but it seemed to me on first glance at the trailer to be something semi-adjacent to a certain kind of movie I really like to re-watch : your Tron : Legacy, your Immortals, your Equilibrium. Familiar structure, sure, clichéd lines, yeah, bad acting, of course, but still a level of spectacle that suitably rewards repeat viewings and (a possibly accidental) depth to the movie's meaning. Certainly the idea of Frankenstein's Monster caught up in a war amongst celestial powers holds a certain promise to all familiar with the novel with its clear and unabashed indebtedness to the works of Milton and Goethe.

 

BUT WHAT THE ***** IS THIS S?!?!? Just forget it. I do not want to see this movie ever again. In fact, if I had simply taken any given sci-fi/fantasy action figures available on hand and placed them on a metal plate appropriately garnished with matchbooks which I then proceeded to carelessly shove into a microwave and heated the whole mess on the "POTATO" setting and watched the ensuing sparks and flames while wearing a pair of 3-D glasses I would have gained for myself an experience nearly indistinguishable from that which I endured at the cineplex. It would have been just as entertaining to me and I wouldn't have had to see Mary Shelley's name receive the postmortem insult of a Special Thanks credit at the very end of it instead of the Sincere Apology her memory deserves.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Movies That Should Have Been Nominated For Best Picture But Weren’t

 

Inside Llewyn Davis

 

The Coen Brothers return to art (and hell) for the first time since 1991’s Barton Fink. Beautifully shot, ably dialogued, loosely (and, on occasion, yawn-inducingly) plotted, excellently acted. The great Todd Alcott outlines on his website what’s real about the film’s depiction of early 60s Greenwich Village folk music scene and points out several subtleties (or, in retrospect, obviouslies) missed on first viewing. F. Murray Abraham (who, to my surprise, is making his first appearance in a Coen film here and the ImdB check which revealed this also let me know he was the baddie in the ninth Star Trek film and was in All The President’s Men too) is devastating in his role at the film’s crux. Oscar Isaac’s absence from the Best Actor nomination list is notable and unfortunate.

 

 

All Is Lost

 

I forget who pointed out that 2013 had two semi-adaptations of Jack London’s classic short story “To Build A Fire” : Gravity and this movie. I think this is the stronger of the two; riskier and more surprising in its choice of finale.

 

 

Fruitvale Station

 

Could not watch this in one go; had to stop right after the flashback to the meeting with the mom in prison. I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this and it’s very hack-y but Michael B. Jordan is the Michael Jordan of acting. Better, even, since Michael Jordan wasn’t MICHAEL JORDAN at thirteen whereas Michael B. Jordan was absolutely killing it as Wallace on The Wire at that age. The dog scene didn’t bother me at the time or even after finding out it’s a fictional addition : if they’d left out him running after the car and cursing it would have been too schmaltzy but as it was it stands as a piece among the film’s general tone of showing this guy’s character and, of course, as a symbolic synecdoche for the film as a whole (did that driver really a hundred percent mean to kill the dog, no, but that’s what happens when you choose to speed and anyone who excuses it by finding some facet of explanation in the fact that the dog was a pitbull or was in the middle of the street is focusing on the wrong things).

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The Wolf of Wall Street

 

???

 

Sex cocaine money excess pills breasts? Sex cocaine money excess pills breasts! Accents suspenders addict live life high hog but can accents suspenders addict hubris crash Scarface while still lingerie cars profanity room full of people dressed identically? Speeches. Speeches in high voices and speeches in higher voices. Facial contortions. But, yes, remember. Always the sex cocaine money excess pills breasts. Never no sex cocaine money excess pills breasts. Wealth helicopter midget toss goldfish murder ass-candle nicknames. Dryhumping escort hierarchies homoeroticism upon homoeroticism. Yacht! Jean Dujardin somehow temporarily usurp narrator-audience Zack Morris story-power? Seymour from Watchmen gets second billing? The Equalizer? Popeye? Lion? Monkey? SEX COCAINE MONEY EXCESS PILLS BREASTS!

 

No joke. I do not feel like I saw a movie. I feel like I just watched thirty six hundred Vines in a row.

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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

 

C+

 

Aside from Harriot, Emily Blunt's character, being extraordinarily "gushy" over someone she essentially just met I felt this was a heart warming tale.

 

Ewan McGregor is as always a pleasure to watch, okay maybe not always because there was a horrid film he did called Eye of the Beholder. And well, quite honestly I haven't seen a lot of his work so... Anyway, Ewan is looking more and more like Roger Moore's love child with each passing year. Just saying.

 

As to the plot of this film unfortunately, as I understand the info, it does not accurately portray events in the Yemen, but as a romance it works well. Then again it's not like I did a paper on the subject, just Googled wondering about accuracy so I suppose I don't know maybe it is fine there.

 

Well anyway, this was a movie. Enjoy.

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The Bad News Bears - A+ (Classic. One of my favorite sports movies of all time.)

 

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training - C (Unnecessary sequel. Feels like a TV of the week movie. Fake Engleberg sucks.)

 

The Bad News Bears Go To Japan - C- (Really stretching things here. Portions of this movie is in Japanese with no subtitles! WTF? The only cool thing is seeing what Japan looked like in the 70s.)

 

Bad News Bears (2005) - C- (Weak remake. The acting doesn't compare at all to the original. Scenes just completely fall flat whereas the same scenes excel in the original.)

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Non-Stop

B+

 

 

I don't know what it is about Liam Neeson, but i love the dude. and his movies, as ridiculous, over the top and cliche as they may be, i always find myself enjoying them. simply, if you liked taken, you'll like non-stop. the movie flows quick, and has a very interesting phone/text message plot/interface-thingy in the movie that just kind of makes you sink yourself into it. jcool plot. cool action. keeps you in suspense. good stuff.

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Nebraska B-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

A black and white film, quietly hilarious. Bruce Dern plays a gruff, alcoholic Dad of 2 grown sons (Will Forte is the other main character-Bob Odenkirk is a local newscaster, hoping to move up the ladder at work), June Squibb plays the Mom. Dad-Woody-gets a Publisher's Clearing House-type come-on and decides to go to Lincoln to collect his million dollars. Sad hilarity involving air compressors ensues.

 

Loved most of the characters but REALLY wish they'd have given the part of the Mom to Angela McEwan , who plays an ex-GF instead.

 

 

Frozen C+

 

Disney distills Hans Christian Andersen again, severely altering The Snow Queen this time. This animated feature doesn't contain ONE vocal performance that's notable and none of the songs are memorable. (HOW "Let It Go" won an award, I'll never guess. ) Every being in this is fairly realistically portrayed, but inexplicably, Olaf the talking snowman, is highly stylized, setting him sorely apart from the rest of the characters, and not in a good way. A reindeer named Sven and the recent GOP old white man politician who claims this film is a thinly-veiled indoctrination into lesbianism aimed at 5 year-old girls, are its best qualities.

 

Think Nordic Cinderella.

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300 : Rise of An Empire

 

D

 

Hey, when you were a kid did you ever play pretend at bathtime with little toy boats and smash them into each other and be all like NOW THE SOLDIERS ON THE BOATS ARE FIGHTING and then go WHOOSH NOW THE BOAT IS ON FIRE and then do the whole thing over again maybe two or three times? Did you? You did? Good. Then there's really no need to watch this movie because that's pretty much all this pointless prequel/sidequel/sequel to 300 manages to be. There was next to no surprise to anything in this film (sole possible exception : the use of the word "glabrous" in a flashback depicting Xerxes' engoddening) and everything happens more or less exactly as could be anticipated by anyone who had ever seen a movie before. Also, pretty sure Eva Green and her eva greens were more or less the actual hero of the story as depicted on screen wait maybe that was intentional maybe this movie is deeper than it seems no of course not seriously don't watch it watch anything else.

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Frozen--B-

 

It was very funny--on par with golden age Disney films in that regard--but the music was really weak. I actually found myself cringing at how bad some of the lyrics were, and the song placement was awkward at best. Kristen Bell's singing was beautiful (who knew she could sing like that?!), but I was really disappointed with Idina Menzel. That Let It Go atrocity was possibly the worst vocal I've ever heard in a big Disney production.

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Wolf of Wall Street

 

C

 

ONLY because I enjoyed Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. I'd give it a C- or D if not for that. It wasn't 100% consistent/flawless but I 'lost him' quite a few times in the film-he ceased to become an actor I recognize and totally melded into his character, and I doubt that character was easy to maintain.

 

The story is one you know; it contains no surprises and the cliche is layered on like jewels on a Faberge egg. AND it's mothefucking THREE HOURS LONG.

 

Media people (ERCIAKS?!) will enjoy it because the decadence/debauchery is fairly similar to the business, though not at THAT level and not now-it USED to be almost as bad as depicted in this film. But after 60 or so minutes, even that gets old.

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