movies

[Vidor]

The idea that Hard Eight is flawless totally falls apart when you bring up the writing, which you haven't mentioned. The plot feels like it was cobbled together from every generic crime film ever and thrown into a blender, and the dialogue is often stilted. PTA's weakest writing by miles, which is certainly where it most suffers in comparison to Badlands. The characters rise and fall on the strength of the performances, there's not much to them besides. (Also snickering at the idea of "peak Paltrow" being anything to get jazzed over.) And that twist at the end felt pretty lame. It's certainly a fine early showcase of what an obvious talent PTA was/is, but it's hardly Dwight Gooden's rookie season - more like Roger Clemens'.

Well, if it rises and falls on its performances, it's got some pretty stellar performances. I don't know, I think the twist at the end is logical and explains the whole story of why Hall's character is taking such an interest in John C. Reilly. Wouldn't say it's a masterpiece, would put it a notch below PTA's later films and certainly below other debut films discussed such as "Badlands", "Citizen Kane", and "Blood Simple", but on it's own terms, it's a damn good movie.

I do think it's one of the prime examples of an executive meddling to a movie's benefit. PTA wanted to call it "Sydney", which is an awful title.

[Vidor]

"Night of the Hunter" appears on another list, great movies from one-time-only directors

http://www.avclub.com/article/one-and-s ... ors-212633

[The Third Man]

I think both titles kinda suck, but that might be because I don't understand craps at all.

I'd say it's easily PTA's weakest, albeit still pretty good. It's just that everything from Punch-Drunk Love and up is really damn good to great.

[Michael]

Hard Eight is awesome. My favorite PTA film, although I'm not a huge fan of his work.

[jim]

Hard Eight is awesome. My favorite PTA film, although I'm not a huge fan of his work.

My wife loved that movie, but it wasn't for me.

[JL21]

Spike Lee has remade Ganja & Hess.

[The Third Man]

Still have some major, major titles I need to catch (Inherent Vice, Boyhood, Calvary, Nymphomaniac, Gone Girl), along with plenty of more minor titles that have captured my interest for one reason or another (namely, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and It Follows, the latter of which is the directorial followup of one of my favorite movies of recent memory: The Myth of the American Sleepover), and I'm guessing I'm not alone. But regardless, what's everybody's best-of-2014 list look like right now?

Mine would be something like:

1. Under the Skin
2. Nightcrawler
3. The Raid 2
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel
5. Birdman

The Raid 2 is one that's especially been on my mind lately. The first time I saw it, I was sympathetic to complaints that it took the lean-and-mean premise of the first film and stretched it out with an additional hour of admittedly boilerplate cops-and-criminals/whose-side-is-he-on crime film plotting - the same stuff John Woo was doing 25 years ago - but with the benefit of hindsight, this actually works in its favor, and manages to conceal some fairly subtle commentary on the dehumanizing nature of brutal violence, which is more than can be said of most of its peers. And it does all this without ever stressing it, relying on editing and music and other tricks of film grammar to convey to us how our ostensible hero is becoming as bad or worse than the forces he's up against. (This is especially evident in the penultimate fight scene, when he takes on the role of Mad Dog from the first film, going up against a sibling duo and handily defeating them.) Plus, the archetypal nature of the story and characters (seriously, the siblings are credited as Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Guy) and the vibrant, colorful cinematography - other than Dredd and Skyfall, this is the best-shot action film in recent memory - give it the feel of an especially brutal comic book film. It's actually funny how bland most actual comic-book films look next to this. So yeah. Fantastic movie.

[MrCrowesGarden]

I haven't seen as many movies as most people ITT but my top 3 for 2014 would be

1.Nightcrawler
2.Gone Girl
3.The Lego Movie

[Jocephus]

celebrity aliases from the sony hack. schneiders seems appropriate

Tom Hanks: "Harry Lauder" and "Johnny Madrid"
Sarah Michelle Gellar: "Neely O'Hara"
Tobey Maguire: "Neil Deep"
Natalie Portman: "Lauren Brown"
Clive Owen: "Robert Fenton"
Rob Schneider: "Nazzo Good"
Taye Diggs: "Scott Diggs" (His real name)
Jude Law: "Mr. Perry"
Daniel Craig: "Olwen Williams"
Jessica Alba: "Cash Money"
Ice Cube: "Darius Stone" and "O'Shea Jackson" (His real name)
Debra Messing: "Ava Harper"

[33anda3rd]

I've seen so few movies this year, my list of what to catch up on is far longer than my list of what I've liked, and most of what I've seen has been on my TV via iTunes at 130am, so any ranking is going to be pretty dumb from me. The ones I've most enjoyed so far are #1 Only Lovers Left Alive, then in no particular order Obvious Child, Under The Skin, Snowpiercer, Birdman, and that doc on Elaine Stritch.

Edit to add: another one I really liked was Chef. It might be because I'm in that business, but it did a great job of realizing that world. Favreau did an admirable job of immersing himself in restaurant culture and bringing it to the screen. Chefs, real life chefs, are not the people you see on Top Chef. They're not pretty they're mostly unattractive, their arms are not covered in tattoos they're covered in tattoos and scars, their fingernails are so brown around the edges and under the nail you'd question why they're touching your food, they have awful personal lives full of wrecked relationships, they drink too much, they drug too much, they're not edgy-cool they're edgy-about-to-snap. Favreau didn't go the whole way in his RomCom but he portrayed a much more accurate chef than Bravo gives us with actual chefs on reality tv.