Bride Wars.

Yeah, it's silly, but I was in the mood for something light and funny. And I have a thing for wedding movies. lol. I had fun, though. XD

Easy Rider

Dennis Hopper's iconic New Hollywood film about a roadtrip for freedom has a bunch of great ideas, but I couldn't get past the feeling that it was essentially a 90 minute music video. A dated, ham-fisted music video. One that can't help but use Steppenwolf's 'Born to be Wild' as the intro song because, well, in case you were wondering, these men were just that - born to be wild. If you combine a major crop in Nebraska with the equivalent of your elbow in your leg, you'll come up with how I feel about that particular scene, and most of the musical choices in general.

The episodic nature of the film, while not necessarily entertaining, actually fits. The movie's aim is to give you the feel of Billy and Captain American's lives. You experience their life with them, complete with riding along the countryside, being thrown in jail, and acid trips. Cool concept with some nice camerwork (Laszlo Kovacs, motherfuckers!!!), but I didn't like it in practice. It was, well, boring. That was most of the movie for me. I felt like Hopper wanted to tell the story through the atmosphere and images of the film, but couldn't resist throwing in portions of a narrative. The combination fell flat.

Jack Nicholson, however, was pretty terrific. His performance is easily the highlight of the film. I enjoyed that Billy and Wyatt literally met him in jail. Sure, an obvious metaphor, but kind of cool nonetheless.

Overall, this is one "classic" that's a bit overhyped. The counter-culture movement has been done much, much better and more interestingly.

I think this movie is more than its lead performance, and actually really something of a great movie. Its sharp criticism of imperialism and simultaneous acknowledgement of the lure of Africa (and other colonial areas) to Europeans was really quite well-done. And then Whitaker arrives on screen like a force of nature, powerful from his very first moment. In my Top 10 of the 2000s I believe.

Hey man, I've never seen this. But I just moved it to #1 on Netflix because now seems like a good time to have a thorough dissection of what it offers -- I'm weirdly familiar with a lot of the counterculture of that era and have skipped this movie for no good reason.

To be clear, or maybe just to clarify for other readers, I wasn't offering up praise only of the lead performance. If a criticism of a movie comes down to only an evaluation of the performances, the criticism should be shot in the skull.

I'm not in 100% agreement on its acknowledgement of the lure of Africa so much as I was taken by the young doc's honorable humanitarian dreams which suffered in the face of a personality as grandiose as Amin's. It does have more to say than "Amin was magnetic and terrible" and I could have mentioned something about Africa's (or Uganda specifically) politics and the relevance to today's Africa. It's times like this I wish I hadn't sworn off "grading" films because I'm sure my X/10 or what have indicated my positive feelings better than the three quick paragraphs I gave it. Which can only mean this: I should have written something better. But it's a good movie, not one of the best of the 2000s in my little opinion.

Yeah that's my biggest argument in favor of ratings--they encapsulate your review. So when I bitch and moan about Inception but still give it three stars, you know where my feelings lie.

Or they inadvertently demonstrate that people will jump at the chance to piss and moan about anything, even something they like.

With respect to the fact that the people who come here aren't pro critics by any means, I'd say that if a critic incorporates a rating system and genuinely believes that it reflects his feelings about the movie, then the content of the review had better reasonably reflect whatever the rating is. The review is where the critic has a chance to reflect on why he felt the way he did and try to explain the way he responded to the movie in such a way. If all that comes out in an ostensibly positive review is a bunch of negative shit, then either he hasn't carefully weighted the structure of the review (skewing towards Negative Nancy territory) or his feelings were so short-lived as to be rather meaningless.

Rather than capitulate to the convincing starrers, I'll henceforth (and only in the viewing journal thread) be typing a + for the movies that got favorable capsule reviews and - for the negatives. Hell, I'll even red n' bold the movies I strongly recommend. This way I won't have to explain why Larry Olivier Does Dallas shares a **** rating with Judd Apatow and The Perkiest Penguin in Detroit. I don't want to be an apologist in this, The Year of Our Lord 2011.

Cool. It's definitely an ambitious film, and parts of it are pretty well done, so a discussion is welcomed.

If by "after a while" you mean "about 10 minutes" then I agree with you completely. I still like this Natali guy though. Comes across as smart.



I saw your post about intending to see this when I did a quick guest/lurk (I should really log in when I lurk. Helps with seeing PMs) and decided that I'd watch it last night too. Alas, it was Les enfants du paradis that I had at home. Wrong "enfants". It happens. Sorry, that was terrible. Just like an enfant terrible.



I liked this well enough apart from the editing. I used to have a good point about the apropos ending but can't remember the film too well. I think it has something to say about xenophobia. You know, those guys weren't too bad but everywhere they went people treated them with suspicion.

Did you watch it? It's one of the top 5 most-recommended-to-me movies of all time. I've moved it down the Netflix queue at least 100 times in favor of things like "I Spit On Your Grave" and "The Brothers Solomon". Why would I do that? Why would I pick those movies above a highly-regarded classic?

I must confess that I was put off by the 3 hour run time and instead opted for a film with a 69 minute run time. That would be Kenji Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion. I'll probably write a paragraph about that one tomorrow.

(2009) The Messenger (*** out of ****) - An honest, emotional look at truly one of the toughest jobs one could do, as a recently returned soldier (Ben Foster) learns the ropes of being an army messenger from his partner (Woody Harrelson), a job that involves soldiers visiting people's houses in order to tell them that their son/daughter has been killed in action. The scenes where the soldiers are going up to these people's houses pack the biggest emotional punch, as director Oren Moverman shows very different and unique situations that never for a second feels forced or contrived. There is also a nice subplot involving Foster getting involved with a widowed wife who he visits and feels sorry for, and the fact that Samantha Morton is able to give her character such depth is simply incredible given most movies would have left most of the character exploration process to Foster's.

Foster and Harrelson are also quite outstanding, and Woody definitely deserved his Best Oscar nomination for this part, and you could make a case Foster deserved a nomination for Best Supporting Actor as well. The movie begins to go off the rails a little around the 3/4 mark before a timely Steve Buscemi return which sets it back on track. Overall, a very well done anti-war film that avoids the cliches of others (Stop-Loss, to name one), in order to tell a heartfelt story of soldiers in another form of crisis.

Agreed with everything you say. Also noticed and disliked the third-act wandering but liked the film overall

Overall though, I did like it, I'm very impressed with Foster, that guy is going places.

Why does it matter? Its a rating, the critic may have negative things to say but they're not rating a film three-stars if they feel it doesn't deserve it. Its also not your or any other persons job to police a rating, not only is it not your review to rate and evaluate but its hardly the most important part of the review anyways. A rating is an approximation of the reviewers overall feeling of the film's quality, a review is where they give their analysis of what the film does right and what it does wrong. Quite frankly I don't see the point of such posts as this, sorry Ken but its hardly a worthwhile way for anyone here to use their considerable thought processing skills and time.

If you find nothing wrong with a positive star rating coupled with a primarily negative review (or vice versa) and don't find film criticism to be as worthy a subject of discussion as film itself, then we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Frankly, the philosophy you've just espoused is baffling to me.

Never said I don't find film criticism to be as worthy a subject of discussion as film itself, but criticizing the use of stars as a rating device seems inconsequential as opposed to criticizing the actual content of the review in question. If I'm reading a negative review of Inception I'm not thinking, "For only being two stars there's little to no mention of what the film did right, this reads like a one star review" because its completely unimportant as compared to the substance of the review itself. As I said, the star rating of the review is the reviewers prerogative and completely unimportant in any evaluation of the review, the content of the review is the substance.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

If you ever want to love this movie, NEVER READ THE BOOKS! If you did, you'll just get disappointment...and entertainment, just not as much.

Full review coming on the blog 1/23

7/10

Yeah I've been a big fan of Foster ever since 3:10 to Yuma, which he deserved an Oscar nod for.