Schoolio's Movie Corner

[roberto73]

I think I caught it on IFC or Sundance back when I had cable and they showed that all the fucking time. Any flick that's got Nic Cage, Dennis Hopper, JT Walsh, and Lara Flynn Boyle in it is automatically better than 80% of everything else out there, but that movie's got a ton of wit and style. I'm about due for a re-watch. It's up their with Blood Simple as far as noir influenced indies go.

EDIT: And it looks like the whole thing's on YouTube.

Thoughts on The Last Seduction (if you've seen it)? It's been ages since I saw it, but I remember liking it quite a bit and thinking it was nearly as good as Red Rock West. Interesting (and unfortunate) that John Dahl's career now mainly consists of directing episodes of Dexter and Californication.

[SoulDischarge]

Agreed. Plus, it's got Linda Fiorentino, who almost makes me want to renounce my life of sin.

[tyles]

Just saw Crumb late Friday night on Turner Classic Movies. It says a lot when R. Crumb is the least messed up person in his family. Also, I could also see why Ghost World was a natural choice for Zwiggoff to direct next.

[zircona1]

Agreed. Plus, it's got Linda Fiorentino, who almost makes me want to renounce my life of sin.

She is the perfect evil bitch in that movie. She's hardly been in anything since that Paul Newman movie Where the Money Is, I wonder what happened to her? Always thought she was a pretty good actress.

[TomServo]

Saw "Jack Reacher" yesterday... it was a terrific time at the movies. Lots of suspense, good car chases (with Tom Cruise actually doing his own stunt driving) and procedural investigation. The ending was a little bookish, but it's based on a book, soooo... okay.

Fair warning, there's a fair amount of murdering innocent women and children that seemed to shock and dismay the crowd I watched the film with on the heels of the recent school massacre. I credit the studio for not delaying the film's release as a result of the killings... but there was a fair amount of gasping in the theater.

Most interesting moment of the afternoon was seeing the trailer for the new Marky Mark-Michael Bay "Bad Boys" style flick "Pain & Gain" back to back with the "Broken City" trailer. Two completely different Marky Marks..... one gigantic Hulkish Mark, and the normal size Mark. Example:

mark-wahlberg-shirtless-body.jpg

[xuclarockerx]

Scrooged is pretty fantastic.

[JorgeC]

The Queen of Versailles - documentary about the rise and fall of an american millionaire (billionaire?) and his wife who thinks they are "normal" people. It's quite interesting to see such a life of excess and see how trashy they can still be (dog poop everywhere, kids can't even take care of their pets, etc). It's like Real Housewives, minus all the fake drama. The husband and wife don't necessarily seem like bad people, but anyone that thinks their 26K square foot home is too small should just die already.

[TomServo]

Family movie day.. Django Unchained.

Loved it. It was very tonally similar (in its peaks and valleys) to Inglourious Basterds, but just like IB, the performances and high-tension situations make it all work. Of course it was filled with the n-word, gratuitous violence, and fairly horrific torture situations... but the movie was everything it set out to be.

To be fair, I'm a big QT fan, so there will be some that don't like the violence, the modern wordplay, the use of the n-word... but as a fan, I was extremely pleased.

[unit300021]

Family Movie day also. All wanted to see different things and only thing we agreed on was Parental Guidance. It was actually pretty funny. Not a great movie by any standards but worth the price of admission. Laughs through out the whole movie.

[mountmccabe]

Saw Les Miserables and mostly enjoyed it. Some very odd choices throughout, though, that occasionally distracted from everything else.

For being a musical it wasn't much for singing... or at least the powerful style of singing I like most (and strongly associate with Les Miz). Anne Hathaway could pull off the half-singing, half-crying acting with the face bit, Hugh Jackman, for example, could not.

I was concerned about Russell Crowe and confident in Hugh Jackman, the latter was had a weak, ugly sound and weird accent drift throughout while the former has a limited voice but used it well and was effective overall.

I posted in here saying at least Eponine will be good... but while Samantha Barks actually projected and has a good voice she stuck out, her singing for the stage sounded out of place and when Tom Hooper did close ups of her face (as he did for pretty much everybody in every song) little was seen. She also had a number of lines cut making the character even more thin.

My friend who didn't know the musical liked it enough and found it rather cinematic; I found that while it did a lot of close-ups (to good effect, at times) it rarely took advantage of films ability to show us more, give us a clear sense of place and perspective.

[ods..]

My friend brought over a few pre-screeners last night and we decided on This is 40 after much deliberation within the group. I LOVED IT. Obviously, much of it is cutesy funny/awkward and there is the Apatow-patented depressing 3rd act, but overall I was laughing soooo much. Albert Brooks is fucking unreal, I couldn't stop whenever he was on the screen. Jason Segel puts in a great cameo as well.

Nothing too special but a lot of laughs for sure. 1000 times better than Funny People (which I really disliked) and definitely on par with Knocked Up.

[TallGuyCM]

Aside from Christoph Waltz's absolutely wonderful performance, I was really let down by Django Unchained. I'll leave it at that for now until more see it, and look forward to some discussion about it.

[bobert]

Aside from Christoph Waltz's absolutely wonderful performance, I was really let down by Django Unchained. I'll leave it at that for now until more see it, and look forward to some discussion about it.

MARGINAL SPOILERS:

Pretty much my assessment as well. Leo was great too, but it was poorly structured, overlong and literally oozed ugliness. I'm a huge Tarantino fan and can stomach more filth and obscenity than 99% of the movie-going public, but when you've built your reputation on writing exceptional dialogue it's pretty lazy and disappointing when you assemble such a fine group of actors and hand them a script that consists primarily of the word ****** uttered in every conceivable variation. Most of all I hate that he forced me to agree with Spike Lee's assessment of a movie he never even bothered to watch. To me Django kind of felt like what Inglorious Basterds would have been like if he'd skipped the whole Jew Special Forces plot and just set the movie in a concentration camp. If the film would have been better then maybe I'd feel differently, but maybe some subject matter deserves a little more respect and shouldn't be marketed as a Christmas Day popcorn movie with 2pac on the soundtrack. Also, Quentin's cameo was the worse scene in any movie he's ever made. No one bats 1.000, I guess.

[FEELS]

What was some of your guys' best surprises this year? I have to go with Chronicle. Thought it was gonna be horrible but ended up being very dark and good.

[ods..]

Cabin in the Woods has to be up there. 21 Jump Street as well. Didn't expect either to be as great as they were.

Still haven't seen Chronicle though... looks a little cheesy to be honest. I'll check it out sometime; I've seen the trailer a few times.

[FEELS]

Yeah definitely agree with 21 Jump Street, shit was pretty hilarious. All of "skinny Jonah's" movies seem to blow except for that one.

It definitely is a tad cheesy, but never too overbearing. I just liked how I thought it was gonna be a typical superpower movie, but it was really dark. The main kid is so fucked in the head and I thought he did a great job acting.

[Vasoline Groove]

The Queen of Versailles - documentary about the rise and fall of an american millionaire (billionaire?) and his wife who thinks they are "normal" people. It's quite interesting to see such a life of excess and see how trashy they can still be (dog poop everywhere, kids can't even take care of their pets, etc). It's like Real Housewives, minus all the fake drama. The husband and wife don't necessarily seem like bad people, but anyone that thinks their 26K square foot home is too small should just die already.

Watched this last night on Netflix on demand. Really good movie. The director must have said Jackpot when everything went south and the family allowed them to keep filming. For all the obnoxiousness of the family, you still have to give them props for allowing the crew to keep filming.

Best surprise movies of 2012:
21 Jump Street
Project X
Pitch Perfect
Haywire
Bernie

[ThatGirl]

I'm looking forward to seeing This is the End in the spring. It looks pretty hysterical, hope it's not a disappointment.

[chairmenmeow47]

i posted my thoughts about les miz on facebook, but will type up a review at some point. all i can say is russell crowe probably drank himself to death after seeing his shitty performance.

while getting carried away on IMDB, i found this again. hey film industry buffs, is the freddie mercury movie ever going to happen?!?!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/

[TallGuyCM]

Wow, Looper was really fucking stupid.

[xanman86]

Wow, Looper was really fucking stupid.

Finally someone said it.

[cutterbutter]

If it wasn't already known, and it should be known, Malick's Days of Heaven is playing in The Dome at the Arclight Hollywood, February 3rd.
https://www.arclightcinemas.com/movi...mo=spotlightM2

[mountmccabe]

I really liked Looper; it might top my very limited 2012 list.

Though I may see Django Unchained this afternoon and will most certainly see Holy Motors on Sunday.

[KungFuJoe]

Fuck Spike Lee and forget some of you pansies, Django Unchained was fantastic! Although, I would have been happier if it had ended 20 minutes sooner then it did.

Looper is great as well and will certainly be in my top ten for the year.

My biggest surprises of 2012?

21 Jump Street - Thought that would be awful and it turned out to be very enjoyable.

The Hunt - I knew it would be good, but didn't expect it to be my favorite film of 2012.

Holy Motors - Expected it to be one of my favorites of the year and turned out to be one of my least favorites.

The Hobbit - Lowered expectations and the fact that Peter Jackson decided to split this into 3 films, made me believe it would be a boring mess. I was happy to find it was quite the opposite, although a bit exhausting and was not a fan of the HFR. The kid inside me thoroughly enjoyed this movie however.

[Neighborhood Creep]

Django was good. Not giving a review but it was worth my 10 bucks

[buddy]

It seems since post Jackie Brown that Tarantino films have mostly served the purpose to please himself, which is fine, but maybe cut down on the over two hour films.

[algunz]

I finally saw Skyfall last night. The first part was awesome, but once they got on the island it turned into some crappy Batman and Joker revenge-capade. It lost me when the girl got shot in the head. James Bond would have never allowed that girl to die.

[getbetter]

They killed off james bonds wife in the sir roger moore era .I

[algunz]

But he didn't let it happen. It's not as if women don't die in Bond movies, but she did nothing but what he asked her to do and she was already a victim of the slave trade. Bond is a gentleman. He would have saved her, and then to add insult to injury that awful one liner that followed was painful. A waste of whisky? What crap.

[TallGuyCM]

They killed off james bonds wife in the sir roger moore era .I

Lazenby.