movies

[JL21]

Was it as dry and witty as Rango?

I didn't think so, but I laughed really hard at Rango. It's tough to compare the two. I'm definitely a fan of all three, and I'd rank them 1. Rango, 2. Wall-E, 3. ParaNorman. It's probably not fair to put it on the level with those other two.

[The Third Man]

Killer Joe.

Holy. [expletive]. [expletive].

Imagine William Faulkner collaborated on a screenplay with the Coen bros. and they turned that over to William "I Have More Balls Than the Rest of Hollywood Combined" Friedkin to adapt. That's the best analogy I can come up with. When the movie ended I literally threw my hands on my head and started laughing out a combination of horror, awe and misanthropic glee. It's the darkest, bleakest, most brutally hilarious black comedy I've ever seen. It literally left me speechless.

Wow.

[docellis]

Excellent recommendation. I will watch.

[Vidor]

"ParaNorman" was pretty funny. I loved how his ringtone was the Halloween theme.

[Richie Allen]

Really loved Throne of Blood a lot! Most visually stunning Kurosawa film I've seen. Amazing. And Mifune was just perfect. The role he was meant to play. No one could have pulled it off the way he did. Not much there for fans of Takashi Shimura, which I happen to be one, but it didn't matter. It's Mifune's film. The first twenty minutes is so cool to look at but the last half hour sealed it for me. I'm thinking it will likely supplant Yojimbo as my second favorite Kurosawa film. And not since Ran have I said out loud to myself so often, "that God damn [expletive] needs to have her [expletive] head sawed off."

[Vidor]

Cinemark Theaters' classic series has been mentioned before in this thread. Thursday night we saw "Jaws". It was pretty awesome to see on the big screen. I did not remember just how tight the screenplay is and how quick the action moves--opening scene with butterface girl that becomes shark food, cops find the body and argue with the mayor, then the scene where the boy gets eaten, bam bam bam. I also wonder if this movie codified the use of a Big Scary Moment right in the opening scene, the trope that is so universal in horror films these days--every time you see a horror movie you usually know that the first character you see is going to get offed.

[The Third Man]

I caught Jaws as well. Totally with you on the screenplay/plot construction.

Stray observations: I'm always surprised at how much funnier movies, even non-comedies, are with a crowd. Lines that'd normally elicit a chuckle, if that, got appreciative laughs from the entire audience, including me (e.g. Richard Dreyfuss' "So, how was your day?" to Brody after his kid was nearly killed that day). I'm also always surprised at how quickly the pace of Jaws accelerates towards the end. One minute they're putting the shark cage in the water, and then it's just one bad situation after another right through to the climax, after which, bam, credits. It's a testament to how well-constructed that movie is that it can still surprise me like that despite having seen it so many times.

Also, I totally noticed something that I'd never noticed watching on TV and may never have: in consecutive shots during the scene after Quint's monologue where the shark is bashing into the boat and a few leaks spring up, you can see a shooting star. Awesome.

[Vidor]

"High Noon" is next week. Yay!

[The Third Man]

"High Noon" is next week. Yay!

Definitely catching that, always been one of my favorite westerns. But the ones I'm really hyped for are Chinatown and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

[TimeForGuinness]

Finally watched Donnie Darko (it's been on my list for about 10 years now), and didn't disappoint.