movies

[go birds]

Saw that advertised on another site i frequent and I'm intrigued.

I'm also intrigued by apollo 18 though.

[JL21]

"Get Low" was a really great film. I'm surprised it didn't get any Oscar nominations, either for best picture, best actor (Robert Duvall), best supporting actor (Bill Murray), best supporting actress (Sissy Spacek) or even best cinematography. It felt like a throwback to 90's indie classics (despite the presence of Duvall and Murray). Duvall is an amazing actor.

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[Richie Allen]

"Get Low" was a really great film. I'm surprised it didn't get any Oscar nominations, either for best picture, best actor (Robert Duvall), best supporting actor (Bill Murray), best supporting actress (Sissy Spacek) or even best cinematography. It felt like a throwback to 90's indie classics (despite the presence of Duvall and Murray). Duvall is an amazing actor.

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I picked that up from the library a month or two ago and thought it was the best film I'd seen all year. One of my favorite Duvall performances ever.

[go birds]

Went and saw Apollo 18 last night. I probably would have enjoyed this more if I wasn't drafting a football team but overall I'll go ahead and say i liked it.

Which means the rest of GRB will hate it.

The concept is great and the production is surprisingly well-done, but it has to be considering what it is going for.

Obviously you'd have to be a tin-foil hat government hating moron to actually buy into the concept. With that said, it is a bit thought-provoking. Anyway, I'm just really into space, conspiracy theories and extraterrestrials so there wasn't one single reason why I was gonna dislike this movie.

Anyway, if you're into found-footage movies, I'd recommend it.

[SHOW]

biggest flaw of the movie--how did the footage get back to earth if they are trying to make everyone believe this is real? Was there a live stream of everything back to mission control where everything was taped?

[Maclowery]

These horrifically bad ads on late nite comedy central for that Bucky Whatever movie from Happy Madison dudes have got to be the absolute single worst ad campaign I've ever seen for a movie.

They're just so, so, so terrible. And I'm smack in the middle of their likely viewers (single white dude who loves lots of stupid stoner comedies)

[cpebbles]

These horrifically bad ads on late nite comedy central for that Bucky Whatever movie from Happy Madison dudes have got to be the absolute single worst ad campaign I've ever seen for a movie.

They're just so, so, so terrible. And I'm smack in the middle of their likely viewers (single white dude who loves lots of stupid stoner comedies)

Have you already forgotten the Jack and Jill trailer?

Bucky Larson is probably the second-worst ad campaign ever.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

"Get Low" was a really great film.

I picked that up from the library a month or two ago and thought it was the best film I'd seen all year. One of my favorite Duvall performances ever.

I'll third this. We rented it last night. Duvall hits it out of the park. However,

[SHOW]

I thought the end was a let down after the big build. Duvall's confession was done expertly. But it went by too quick. I wanted to hear some of those stories he was inviting people out to tell. I was looking forward to the contrast between all the wild imaginings vs. the truth. But overall, very enjoyable and the concept of life changing mistakes that you have to come to terms with is something I can relate to as a middle aged fart looking back.

[JackofDiamonds]

These horrifically bad ads on late nite comedy central for that Bucky Whatever movie from Happy Madison dudes have got to be the absolute single worst ad campaign I've ever seen for a movie.

They're just so, so, so terrible. And I'm smack in the middle of their likely viewers (single white dude who loves lots of stupid stoner comedies)

Preach! I just speed-crushed the first two seasons of the League and was forced to watch the second season on Hulu. Every other commercial break was this stupid Bucky Larson ad. Terrible movie, worse campaign.

[The Third Man]

Aliens came up on another forum and I banged out some disorganized thoughts because why not. Figured I may as well share here too:

Random thoughts on Aliens, just because:

-A lot of people seem to think that Alien is a far better movie, and while I prefer it as well, I disagree; Aliens is one of the few sequels I can think of that expands and deepens the themes of the first movie while sacrificing nothing in the way of narrative tension. Instead of rehashing the first film, Cameron adds enough new twists - the marines, the alien queen, the character of Newt (one of the best child characters in any movie), the presence of Paul Reiser's corporate sleaze, etc. - and ramps up the consequences just enough so that while it's bigger and badder, it's not any less thoughtful or exciting or brilliant. It has its flaws in comparison to Alien (which, to be fair, is pretty much a perfect movie), namely a bit of bloat and the annoying presence of Bill Paxton, but what it does well - which is pretty much everything else - it does spectacularly. I used to balk when people told me they preferred Aliens to the first, but I'm to the point where I not only sympathize with the argument, on the right day I might even agree.

-One of my favorite things about Aliens (and, for that matter, the first movie) is how organically it handles its themes. Whereas Alien was, above all, about rape, Aliens is about motherhood. Ripley's place in the story begins with her learning that everybody she knows and loves is long since dead, namely her daughter, who we see in a photograph; later, on the decimated colony, we discover Newt, an orphaned young girl whom Ripley de facto adopts and risks her life to defend, against, who else, the Alien queen - who is the baddest [expletive] in the movie. In fact, the entire film has a nice feminist bent to it: in addition to Ripley and the Alien queen being the strongest characters in the film, Vasquez is the most badass of the Marines and Newt is the smartest and most resourceful colonist (or at least, the only one that manages to survive). None of this stuff ever gets in the way of the narrative, though, and you can appreciate the movie entirely without ever considering it. It just adds that much more to enjoy. And all this is why Ripley is such a great character: she manages to be a total badass without sacrificing an ounce of her femininity in the process. She's never a super-soldier or a hardass like, say, Linda Hamilton in T2; she's just resourceful, smart, and a deeply protective mother figure.

-A lot of descriptions of Aliens (and much of the debate we had about it on this forum) describe it as the action successor to the leaner sci-fi thriller of Alien, which kinda misses the point. Aliens isn't action in the sense that, say, a John Woo film is action. It's closer in sensibility to a war film, with the "action" scenes portraying a horribly disorganized skirmish. The marines get ambushed in the first action sequence, with the scene shot and cut in such a manner that the geography of the scene is deliberately very confusing and intense. And it never improves all that much until the end when Ripley takes control of [expletive]. So yeah, it's an action movie, but that description is kind of glib if you ask me. The movie's brilliance is largely in portraying how thoroughly [expletive] the marines are, and how they have absolutely no control over the situation, getting their asses kicked by a force they underestimate. Like Ash says in the first movie, it's a perfect organism: relentless in its aggression, hard as hell to kill (which, even if you manage, backfires when their [expletive] acid blood shoots at you and burns you half or more to death), and vicious (strong enough to tear you apart with their hands, or just stab you to death with their massive tails or protruding mouths).

-Speaking of Ripley taking control of [expletive], the scene in which she takes off on her own to rescue Newt, up to the point in which she gets back to the elevator, is about as perfect a sequence I can think of in any movie. The way [expletive] continually builds throughout the sequence, making things worse and worse (Ripley not finding Newt at the spot of the bracelet, Newt trapped, Ripley saving her and coming across the queen, two Aliens approach from the sides as Ripley bombs the hell out of the egg nest, etc.), and the way it's all shot (the cutting between Ripley and Newt, the slow-mo upon the discovery of the alien queen, etc.) and scored (i.e. that musical sting when Ripley hears Newt's scream and realizes she's still alive, and kicks back into high-gear), is [expletive] brilliant across the board. I can't think of a better sequence in any action movie.

-While Alien (and Blade Runner) show what a [expletive] genius Ridley Scott was at creating lived-in movie worlds, Aliens manages to even best Alien in regards to its set design. The Nostromo in Alien is a masterpiece of design, but Aliens takes it a step further with the LV-426 colony. Cameron had an advantage in this regard, as he had the opportunity to portray a world which, due to the disastrous effects of the aliens, was less pristine and therefore more "lived-in" than the ship in the original, but he takes full advantage of it. Cameron deserves a lot of credit especially for the manner in which he shot the film, which greatly contributes to the tactile feeling of the film and its environment: close-ups of destroyed areas, the POV shots through the grainy helmet cameras, the use of elements (rain/water, and fire, especially) to make things feel organic and tangible, etc. And I can't forget the terraformed areas, such as the alien egg nest or the bowels of the colony where they kept the implanted humans.

I really like Aliens.

[Maclowery]

Hobo With a Shotgun is a total crowd pleaser, even if all my guests universally look away from the screen multiple times.

So many amazing 1 liners! O man.