Hope Springs: 1/4. Awful. Boring. Shallow. Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep and Steve Carrell can't save this stinker. A misfire in both scripting and directing, it thinks its deeper than it actually is. "Titanic" seemed a lot shorter.

I watched Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus last night. I can really see why someone would love the film - it makes spectacular use of color and space. Cinematically there's really a lot to like. The stuffy, uptight British culture is contrasted with the free flowing and, at times, barbaric Indian culture. A great deal of this is shown visually, and that's always a good thing. It's also really impressive that the entire thing was shot in a studio and not on location.

That said, I wasn't really a fan. The story itself is so blunt and simple, that the wildly stylized way in which it was done felt more like window dressing than anything else. Sure, it takes some great direction to give a poor story a little something else, but that story is still there. And the story of Black Narcissus just isn't very good or interesting. It veers too often into hysteria, hyperbole, and melodrama, and characters seem to spit dialogue at each other more than they actually interact. The whole thing just felt really phoney.

A lot of people love this movie, and I'm not saying it's bad. It's too well directed to be considered a bad movie. It's just one that I think is easier to study for what it does well than it is to love as a whole film.

Thanks for the write-up Pete: I've been putting off seeing this for a while

That's pretty much what Kasdan's done.



To me it's the one Kasdan movie I would give **** to. You could say that its more of homage to Film Noir that a re-birth as it's come to be seen by many practicioners since. But ti works well as homage.

Looking at his IMDB entry, it's definitely the best Kasdan I've seen. He's really only made three or four good movies and this one was entertaining and well done. I didn't find it great.

It's certainly better than The Big Chill. What a lame movie that was

I went against type and watch this a year or two ago after reading Rob's review. I pretty much agree with your sentiment that the story is not very interesting. What was rare for me (I'm not a movie intellectual) is that when I thought about the movie later on I realized that many of the technical aspects of the film that really kind of bothered me during the viewing were intentionally made to irritate and ratchet up the feeling of tension. It is rare that I come away with an appreciation for that kind of manipulation, but it fooled me and I give the movie a pretty high recommendation for that alone.

The Big Chill was no substance at all. Rice pudding as someone once said.

Kasdan to me has always been something of a Ron Howard with an edge. He's done some good and decent movies here and there (Body Heat, Silverado (Which was to westersn what Heat was to Noir), Accidental Tourist). But nothing truly spectacular (aside from maybe Body Heat).

I like the comparison to Howard. Kasdan's name on a picture has, for reasons completely unknown to me, the association of Great Quality. Looking at his filmography, I've no idea why I've made that association. Grand Canyon was impressive to me when I was 12 but I haven't seen it since, I Love You To Death is a good late-night cable flick and Body Heat is legitimately good. I've never seen Silverado and wasn't particularly interested in seeing The Accidental Tourist before reading the book, now available at every single libary near you on the mass market bargain table. Ebert seems to have an appreciation of the guy and maybe that's why I've believed him more important than he is. Dreamcatcher, Mumford... golly gee.

And I should mention that The Accidental Tourist is really poor

No, you should mention that you and I are logged into the forum at the exact same time.

Reaches out fingertip for James to touch...

I even edited your post so your incorrect "we're" became a "were"

That's my fingertips, baby

The Expendables: Director's Cut

Well I emerged from my cave to watch something NOT in theaters or a re-watch of a Blu-Ray I bought to replace a DVD. I have watched something new! And The Expendables was......decent enough. But man, you can tell that Stallone has lost his ability to actually MAKE a movie with very poor sound levels(some of the dialogue was damn near silent and the music/action was way too loud), bad framing and a lot of the stories details don't really make much sense. But then the action hits up and everything is extremely awesome and in the end, I did have a lot of fun with it. Somedays you just want Dolph Lungdren to blow the top half of a person off with some big ass gun.

7/10

Saw The Little Mermaid again. I like this one -- feels relaxed and cartoonish just as often as it feels like the kind of large-scale movie that the would define the studio's early-to-mid-90s critical favorites. The songs are mostly memorable (especially the three most famous tunes) and the animation is often beatiful. They went on to make three great movies, one after the next, after this was released and this one is frequently the equal of those others.

Guys...check me on this. On the flight back they were showing The Lucky One. I never would have seen this movie had it not been for this flight. Does this shit count as a viewing considering shitty headphones, asking for a Heineken and a water, getting up to take the oldest to the shit box, and the general uncomfortableness of sitting coach on fucking AeroMexico.

Anyways...I didn't really like what I saw. Way to convenient those circumstances in the film. Way too dreamy those locations. Way too villainy that villain (with added closure). Way too narrow those eyes Zac Efron.

How are the offspring doing up north?

It's still north of here, right?

Same place, my Palmdalian pal. Things are great over on this side of the skillet. Realized recently that I'll be doing what I'm doing for at least another 30 years. It's more frightening than it sounds when you realize, as I realized, that I really could have followed the dream and done okay. Ah, well. That's near-middle-adulthood for you.

Fucking stop with that 3rd and 4th sentence. You're sounding eerily like the voice in my mind.

*exhales*

Fuck.

[quote="ram1312]Fucking stop with that 3rd and 4th sentence. You're sounding eerily like the voice in my mind.

*exhales*

Fuck.[/quote]

Maybe there's still time for us to build homemade flamethrowers, outfit the '99 Corolla with flame decals, glass packs and a speargun.

Netflix Instant streamed Bloody Reunion for us (Korean-translation title To Sir with Love makes absolutely no sense, none whasoever) and it was more of what I've come to expect from the b-line of horror movies imported from Korea: strong violence which is then revealed to be metaphorical violence (or, in this movie, mostly both) that is meant to reveal great emotional truths about the dreamer/crazy person. If you liked A Tale of Two Sisters and didn't feel like it contained enough elements of the movie Identity, this is the movie for you. Average after factoring in the somewhat predictable twist: I strongly hated the movie until the twist and, out of some respect for the ideas (the person you hate is not necessarily the same person you hated 20 years ago so grow up and put down the staple gun), feel softly toward the whole. It was also quick-moving. Badly executed in parts, too.