Schoolio's Movie Corner

[SoulDischarge]

Next stop: A Zed & Two Naughts.

[Originalbob]

I also saw Fritz Lang's M on Monday while I was home sick and forgot to write about it. I don't have a lot to say that smart film writers haven't been saying for decades, but obviously it's downright masterful - sparse and dread-inducing in the early stages, then suddenly a rousing manhunt, and finally a candidly humanist look at vigilante justice. An all-time great.

While reading in my film books, I read such wonderful things about Lang's work that I did a blind-buy (Blu Criterion) of M and loved it. The quality for '31 is so astonishing. You could tell there was subtle influences for Citizen Kane--use of the dutch angle especially with foreshadowing tactics. Classic film... I should revisit it again.

[stinkbutt]

Saw Avengers tonight

[thelastgreatman]

When do you guys have time to watch TV?

[mountmccabe]

While our films are rendering.

[schoolofruckus]

While reading in my film books, I read such wonderful things about Lang's work that I did a blind-buy (Blu Criterion) of M and loved it. The quality for '31 is so astonishing. You could tell there was subtle influences for Citizen Kane--use of the dutch angle especially with foreshadowing tactics. Classic film... I should revisit it again.

I love when the Criterion blind buys work out. I bought the Vigo set blind and was super pleased with the purchase; hoping to have the same experience with Kieslowski's Three Colors set when I get around to watching it.

[schoolofruckus]

While our films are rendering.

I never thought I'd say this, but /thread.

[Down Rodeo]

Yeah, I wanted to stay for Belly of an Architect afterwards, but that would have been a bit much on a school night.

Next stop: A Zed & Two Naughts.

These are the only two Greenaways I've seen. I liked A Zed & Two Noughts a bit better (reminiscent of Dead Ringers), but Belly of an Architect had its moments too. I just had a harder time getting into that one.

As long as we're classing up this joint again, I had a wonderful experience the other night discovering the films of Sergei Parajanov with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. This is a visionary film, full of frenetic camera movements, weirdly saturated colors and an incredible sense of history, environment, love and struggle. Fans of Tarkovsky should eat this up.

[daxton]

Where've you been dax?

Just haven't been online much lately, and in all honesty, forgot about the board. I also went and got myself a boyfriend. So, I guess that takes up a lot of time.

[cutterbutter]

Avengers breaks the record for all time domestic box office opening weekend with $200 million, passing Harry Potter 7 pt 2's previous record by 30 million dollars. I'm really just super happy for Joss Whedon.

http://www.slashfilm.com/the-avenger...weekend-gross/

[MissingPerson]

Hooray for Whedon.

[TomServo]

Also saw Avengers, at a 9:30am showing... the busiest early showing I've seen. Sold out, even.

Anyhow, found it extremely entertaining, but nothing draws you in enough to elicit any sort of emotion, just fun and explosions and lots of stars. Contrasting it with The Dark Knight and other big-time comic/adventure flicks, it never feels real. There's never a moment you feel fear or apprehension, it's just punching and explosions and such. It's essentially the same pattern as the other Marvel movies, but lacks the punch of the newer Batman flicks.

As a big Joss Whedon fan, I was happy that it has the same pop and humor he always brings, and I as happy that someone else did his casting for him, so we weren't facing a bunch of TV actors he fell in love with. There were lots of laugh out loud moments and some cheers, and two post-film and post-credit scenes, so stick around.

I would say don't bother seeing it in 3D, though. I didn't feel like it added anything to the experience.

What a year for a old-school comic geek. New Batman, Avengers, Spidey... and Prometheus. And the Hobbit. And a new Tarantino flick.

[zircona1]

What I watched this weekend instead of The Avengers

The Five Year Engagement - It's predictable but funny, with good acting all around. Chris Parnell's sweaters are worth a few laughs. Kind of bummed that this hasn't done that well at the box office, it deserves better.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Much funnier than I expected it to be. I've come to be skeptical of anything associated with Apatow now, but I was laughing out loud several times throughout this. The guy who played John Lennon was hilarious.

Withnail and I - I watched this again, it's great of course.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

Avengers was everything I could have wanted from a giant spectacle of a film. Whedon has definitely impressed with his ability to create very clear, very big, and very exciting action sequences. The movie never drags, and the climactic battle in new York really is as big and chaotic as one could hope for! It successfully does what the Transformers movies made huge visual messes out of.

Lots of nods to big time nerds - the reveal of the helicarrier made me shake with excitement, and the mid-credits reveal was astonishing - so happy I didn't have that spoiled! I have a hard time believing they can really do right by that in future movies, but the prospects are exciting.

[AlecEiffel]

The Five Year Engagement - It's predictable but funny, with good acting all around. Chris Parnell's sweaters are worth a few laughs. Kind of bummed that this hasn't done that well at the box office, it deserves better.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Much funnier than I expected it to be. I've come to be skeptical of anything associated with Apatow now, but I was laughing out loud several times throughout this. The guy who played John Lennon was hilarious.

You do know he produced the Five Year Engagement?

[cutterbutter]

It's just a huge shame that Marvel doesn't have the rights to make movies for all of their properties. With the whole mid credits reveal the idea that fantastic 4 and spiderman won't be involved in the future is kind of a punch in the gut with Amazing Spiderman coming from Sony and the Fantastic 4 reboot happening. I mean it's already amazing that there was the foresight and planning to even have Avengers happening but the universe of the future films could be so greatly expanded as well as the new spiderman, xmen, F4 etc movies benefiting.

[RotationSlimWang]

Also saw Avengers, at a 9:30am showing... the busiest early showing I've seen. Sold out, even.

Anyhow, found it extremely entertaining, but nothing draws you in enough to elicit any sort of emotion, just fun and explosions and lots of stars. Contrasting it with The Dark Knight and other big-time comic/adventure flicks, it never feels real. There's never a moment you feel fear or apprehension, it's just punching and explosions and such. It's essentially the same pattern as the other Marvel movies, but lacks the punch of the newer Batman flicks.

As a big Joss Whedon fan, I was happy that it has the same pop and humor he always brings, and I as happy that someone else did his casting for him, so we weren't facing a bunch of TV actors he fell in love with. There were lots of laugh out loud moments and some cheers, and two post-film and post-credit scenes, so stick around.

I would say don't bother seeing it in 3D, though. I didn't feel like it added anything to the experience.

What a year for a old-school comic geek. New Batman, Avengers, Spidey... and Prometheus. And the Hobbit. And a new Tarantino flick.

Exactly what part of The Dark Knight felt real?

[zircona1]

You do know he produced the Five Year Engagement?

No I did not. Still would've seen it if I had known though.

[Alchemy]

There aren't really any spoilers in this movie, but maybe you don't want to read this:

I was a little disappointed with The Avengers. I kept reading reviews about how it "raises the bar" for the Marvel movies; yet, I think some of the individual films - Thor and Iron Man, for example - were better films, overall. I found the beginning of the movie to be quite boring. The Loki stuff seemed to come out of nowhere. I would have liked to see a bit more of how Loki came into this new plot - maybe following him a bit after he fell off the rainbow bridge thing. But the Loki stuff isn't what made the beginning boring, for me; it was bringing all the heroes together and getting them onboard that was boring. There seemed to be a lot of foreshadowing about how Bruce Banner turns into The Hulk, as if we didn't know what The Hulk was. Captain America's intro is basically just the end of the movie Captain America. I mean, I enjoy watching Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, and I enjoy looking at Scarlett Johansson... I just think we could have gone through some of those introductions faster. If anybody could have had more of an intro, it was Thor, since Loki is the bad guy and he would have more connection to that (although, it was excited to see him come out of nowhere). Also, I didn't think any of the SHIELD people were interesting. They seemed to always just be running around and giving orders to people.

But once they got everybody together, I started to really enjoy the movie. And I think the reason I enjoyed it the most was because of how funny it was. The stuff with everybody not being able to get along was sort of predictable, but all the jokes kept the cogs running smoothly. Especially when they stopped skirting around - and finally released - THE HULK! It was really cool to see him crashing through everything. He was easily the best part of the action. I thought Iron Man was cool, too, because he always has this whole arsenal of tricks that are fun to see. Captain America and Thor were a little boring to watch, because they basically just swing around their shield/hammer all the time. Sometimes Thor does cool stuff, but he wasn't as cool as The Hulk and Iron Man, in my opinion. Hawkeye was a bad ass character, but his scenes were just him shooting things with his bow, and they were like any bad ass sniper/archer movie scenes... But it's tough to juggle all these characters, I bet, and I think that Whedon did it right by doing it humorously. Even Loki's scenes became laugh-out-loud hilarious.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

My favorite line of the movie was when Cap said, "There's only one God and I don't he dresses like you." I was having a giggle fit at that one.

[Alchemy]

My favorite part is when Loki was talking to The Hulk on Stark's tower.

[HandBanana]

Dear lord I Melt With You is the most insanely, flabbergastingly self-absorbed, ridiculously navel-gazing movie I have seen in ages.
How was this even a thing that happened that somebody paid money for which now exists?

[Grandma]

I watched The Avengers last night and it almost made up for the piss flavor that was left in my mouth after watching Thor, Iron Man 2, The Hulk, and Captain America. WHERE THE FUCK WAS ANTMAN!?

[AlecEiffel]

WHERE THE FUCK WAS ANTMAN!?

COMING TO THEATERS IN 2014

[Grandma]

yeah...we'll see

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

That was a very strange cameo hahaha

In other news, i finally got around to Attack the Block last night, and while i was never very excited about any trailers, it truly did live up to every bit of hype it got! What a fucking fantastic movie! it starts right off with a bang and never lets go, and the ending is just phenomenal! Those shots with Moses running through halls of the block with the aliens stampeding after him were breathtaking! The kids were extremely well cast and believable, the action was great, the humor sci fi, and horror/thriller elements all blended very seamlessly, and the logic formed at the end about what the aliens wanted didn't seem too forced. i really enjoyed the score a lot too! Awesome movie. it also helped that there was absolutely no fat - this thing just moves and wastes no time whatsoever, which is refreshing in a time with overly-long action films that spend a lot of time building stuff up.

EDIT: I'd also like to mention the really smart design of the monsters - obviously very simple, but done is way they are still pretty scary, and the lack of detail/color lent themselves to a smaller budget very well.

EDIT 2: I just discovered that the score was done by 2 of the guys from Basement Jaxx, which makes a lot of sense.

[AlecEiffel]

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

Yes, i was extremely familiar with the Paul Robertson gif and was going a little bonkers when i saw that actual scene in the movie hahaha

[juloxx]

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - Much funnier than I expected it to be. I've come to be skeptical of anything associated with Apatow now, but I was laughing out loud several times throughout this. The guy who played John Lennon was hilarious.

Why is everyone skeptical about this movie? Its fucking amazing, probably my favorite or one of my favorite comedies. Highly recommended to anyone that enjoys laughing

That was a very strange cameo hahaha

In other news, i finally got around to Attack the Block last night, and while i was never very excited about any trailers, it truly did live up to every bit of hype it got! What a fucking fantastic movie! it starts right off with a bang and never lets go, and the ending is just phenomenal! Those shots with Moses running through halls of the block with the aliens stampeding after him were breathtaking! The kids were extremely well cast and believable, the action was great, the humor sci fi, and horror/thriller elements all blended very seamlessly, and the logic formed at the end about what the aliens wanted didn't seem too forced. i really enjoyed the score a lot too! Awesome movie. it also helped that there was absolutely no fat - this thing just moves and wastes no time whatsoever, which is refreshing in a time with overly-long action films that spend a lot of time building stuff up.

EDIT: I'd also like to mention the really smart design of the monsters - obviously very simple, but done is way they are still pretty scary, and the lack of detail/color lent themselves to a smaller budget very well.

Been wanting to see this for quite some time, but I dont know a single person that has seen it. Glad to hear it turned out good.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

I can promise that you in particular will really like it, being familiar with your taste in movies.