Schoolio's Movie Corner

[unit300021]

I saw Side Effects yesterday, it was pretty good, I'd say the less you know about the movie going in the more you'll enjoy it. Rooney Mara (doesn't it sound like her last name and first name should be switched?) did a great job playing depressed.

Saw this post a few days ago. Saw Side Effects was playing at the three dollar theater. Had time to today so went and killed a couple hours. I would agree best way to go see it is if you know nothing about it. I never even heard of it prior to this post. It was good. Not the best thriller type movie I've seen but worth the watch.

[schoolofruckus]

There's nothing wrong with The Hurt Locker.

That's accurate in a sense - it's an alright movie. It just happens to be miscast as a great one, and I don't even mean by the Oscars; many smart people seem to feel it's actually some sort of modern landmark, when really it's just an above-average pro-troop adrenaline trip. The aesthetics may not be Michael Bay, but I have a hard time differentiating the author's point of view.

[bobert]

That's accurate in a sense - it's an alright movie. It just happens to be miscast as a great one, and I don't even mean by the Oscars; many smart people seem to feel it's actually some sort of modern landmark, when really it's just an above-average pro-troop adrenaline trip. The aesthetics may not be Michael Bay, but I have a hard time differentiating the author's point of view.

I thought there were parts of the Hurt Locker that were pretty critical of the military. There are multiple scenes in the movie where the "hero" needlessly puts his men in danger in service of his own machismo. Sure the movie displays a certain awe for the skills and fighting abilities of our servicemen but that's pretty consistent with a lot of the frontline journalism the movie emulates.

At the very least it was an honest depiction of effects that a combat environment have on the psyche of men who have served. The movie ends with the main character basically admitting that he's no longer fit to be a husband and a father. That the military has ruined him, to a certain extent.

[tyles]

Anyone in LA who was piqued by my review of Phase IV:



You have another chance to see it as part of LACMA's dubiously-titled "Science Fiction After Kubrick" series.

If you have not seen Solyaris projected, make that a priority. I'm bummed that Stalker isn't included in the series, as that's the only one of Tarkovsky's six masterpieces that I haven't seen on a big screen (and also perhaps my favorite).

Cannot believe that Zardoz is included in that series.

[iv3rdawG]

To the Wonder play dates: http://www.magpictures.com/dates.asp...4-d8bc588d661f

Landmark for L.A.

[RotationSlimWang]

That's accurate in a sense - it's an alright movie. It just happens to be miscast as a great one, and I don't even mean by the Oscars; many smart people seem to feel it's actually some sort of modern landmark, when really it's just an above-average pro-troop adrenaline trip. The aesthetics may not be Michael Bay, but I have a hard time differentiating the author's point of view.

I honestly don't get this. I don't want to get into a big argument with you, but I'm pretty sensitive to patriotic glorification of war pro-America bullshit and I'd put Hurt Locker WAY at the bottom of movies that evoke those kind of sensibilities. The only part of it that's rather egregious is the end with the body bomb. That feels like a mildly insane sensationalistic dramatization of the brutality of the enemy, but for all I fucking know it might be something that really happened in which case how can you blame them for using it.

Hurt Locker to me always felt like something more along the lines of Full Metal and Apocalypse Now but on a much smaller scale--a character piece about how to be effective in war a man has to lose his sanity. I really don't get the pro-troop angle of it you're portraying. I mean, it's not anti-troop but I don't really think it's about them being heroes--it's about how becoming a perfect soldier means giving up parts of the man you were back in the real world that you can never get back. That resonated with me a lot and a big part of why I enjoyed it was that I thought it didn't lose itself in trying to portray the soldiers as being great men. The main character is a fucking psycho by all accounts. He's not doing this because he believes in America or to defend his family or any of that shit. He's not even doing it because he cares who win. He's doing it because he's so fucked in the head he doesn't know how to be anything else anymore.

How that message can be said to be a pro-troop piece of jingoism is really odd to me.

[xuclarockerx]

Yeah. What they said. ^

[tyles]

I honestly don't get this. I don't want to get into a big argument with you, but I'm pretty sensitive to patriotic glorification of war pro-America bullshit and I'd put Hurt Locker WAY at the bottom of movies that evoke those kind of sensibilities. The only part of it that's rather egregious is the end with the body bomb. That feels like a mildly insane sensationalistic dramatization of the brutality of the enemy, but for all I fucking know it might be something that really happened in which case how can you blame them for using it.

Hurt Locker to me always felt like something more along the lines of Full Metal and Apocalypse Now but on a much smaller scale--a character piece about how to be effective in war a man has to lose his sanity. I really don't get the pro-troop angle of it you're portraying. I mean, it's not anti-troop but I don't really think it's about them being heroes--it's about how becoming a perfect soldier means giving up parts of the man you were back in the real world that you can never get back. That resonated with me a lot and a big part of why I enjoyed it was that I thought it didn't lose itself in trying to portray the soldiers as being great men. The main character is a fucking psycho by all accounts. He's not doing this because he believes in America or to defend his family or any of that shit. He's not even doing it because he cares who win. He's doing it because he's so fucked in the head he doesn't know how to be anything else anymore.

How that message can be said to be a pro-troop piece of jingoism is really odd to me.

Agreed. The Hurt Locker is an advert for the Army as much as The Wrestler would encourage anyone to make pro-wrestling a career choice.

[wmgaretjax]

i come in somewhere in the middle on hurt locker... there is a bit of combat as adrenaline-junky glorification there that bugs me, but for the most part lacks the hero worship of most military flicks. ZDT was way more problematic in my mind.

[xanman86]

So did anyone participate in the flash sale on criterion.com this week?

(somehow, I know that Xanman did, and would be more shocked if he didn't)

I randomly just saw this because I was linking a friend to those Upstream Color screenings in the page this was on.

I picked up Pina and Sansho the Bailif on Blu and had a $50 credit to their store so it came out to $.89 total

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...uthkey=CITI6mI

[RotationSlimWang]

i come in somewhere in the middle on hurt locker... there is a bit of combat as adrenaline-junky glorification there that bugs me, but for the most part lacks the hero worship of most military flicks. ZDT was way more problematic in my mind.

Well I'm glad to hear that you're at least in the middle, but I don't see how adrenaline junkie is glorification. I mean you can say that it paints the guy as a total badass which it does, but at no point does Hurt Locker make it look desirable. It's quite literally about the junkie aspects of being an adrenaline junkie. To say it glorifies the main character is a lot like saying that Trainspotting glorifies heroin addiction.

[mountmccabe]

Agreed. The Hurt Locker is an advert for the Army as much as The Wrestler would encourage anyone to make pro-wrestling a career choice.

It's quite literally about the junkie aspects of being an adrenaline junkie. To say it glorifies the main character is a lot like saying that Trainspotting glorifies heroin addiction.

Y'all are ruining everything.

[schoolofruckus]

In response to both Bobby and Randy.... I don't necessarily wish to get into a huge Hurt Locker debate either (especially because I haven't seen it in three years and it didn't stick with me at all) but this:

Hurt Locker to me always felt like something more along the lines of Full Metal and Apocalypse Now but on a much smaller scale--a character piece about how to be effective in war a man has to lose his sanity.

...is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't think it has any place being mentioned among films by Kubrick and Coppola. I liken it more to a film like Lethal Weapon, which is similarly about a reckless danger fiend that is presented as some sort of ultimate badass-with-emotional-scars. It may be a bit slower, but it's not substantially more thoughtful.

[TallGuyCM]

Gabe, did you ever make it out to Like Someone in Love?

[RotationSlimWang]

Yeah but that's not the point. I wasn't comparing the quality of Hurt Locker to Full Metal Jacket, but there's a limited number of films you can use to try to demonstrate a thematic difference between war movies. It feels like the movie is getting indicted more by social factors going on during its release--my feelings watching Generation Kill (which was never anything but positive) is different now than it was when the series was released at the height of "this war is stupid" fervor. I focus more on character attributes now than I did then when it was a more current expose of the fucked up mess we were in as a country. Perhaps revisiting it now that there's some distance, now that we're no longer in the middle of all The Hurt Locker praise (I've noticed you tend to react pretty severely when movies are getting a lot of hype and you think they're just mediocre, Gabe) would clear things up.

There's just nothing about it that makes me say "this is supporting the military." I guess Lethal Weapon is kind of an accurate analogy except that LW definitely had to contrive the circumstances for the character's disposition a lot more. I mean, what the fuck kind of person would volunteer to disarm bombs in Iraq? Somebody apparently is, but I find it hard to imagine any of them being particularly emotionally stable. Is it really unfair to be portraying the story of those men as soldiers hooked on taking a chance with their lives? If anything I give it credit for not pumping out more of the "look at how heroic this guy is" angle and instead focusing more on how he doesn't even think about himself in those terms.

[RotationSlimWang]

There are a lot of talented filmmakers who've made absolutely shitty, myopic depictions of war. See: Platoon. That was penned by somebody who was actually there in the war and still his take on it ended up feeling shallow and immature. Hurt Locker never really slipped off that cliff for me but it did ride kinda close to it at the end with the little kid bomb. I still think the ending did a really nice job of explaining the whole character with just a shot of him in the supermarket. It was well handled and subtle.

[Jordanp]

Whereas when Hurt Locker ended, I desired to become a rogue bad ass who did shit with reckless abandon and had an emotional side. To me much more of war cheerleader theme.

Zdt, at least the first half, led me to rethink military tactics and the miligramesque effects that being an interrogator has on people. Although I enjoyed hurt locker more, I would argue that Zdt is more due for the best picture because it is more thought provoking which is the what the Oscars seem to prefer.

[schoolofruckus]

(I've noticed you tend to react pretty severely when movies are getting a lot of hype and you think they're just mediocre, Gabe)

I certainly can't dispute that. In many instances, I'm way harsher on movies that I'm okay with initially but have to keep talking and hearing about for months on end (Hurt Locker, Social Network and Inception come to mind) than movies I hate right away.

[xanman86]

Great day! Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas are in for a Veronica Mars movie and started a kickstarter today to make it happen. The goal is 2 million and they are already at over $600,000!!!

Help get us finally to the ending this series deserved.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-movie-project

[unit300021]

So I know I am a little bit late to the Compliance discussion but I finally got around to watching it last night. If I didn't know it was based off a true story I probably would have loved it. Unfortunately I just kept finding myself frustrated with it because it's hard for me to believe that the people in real life that this happened to actually let it happen. It really took a maintenance man a few hours later to realize something wasn't right? I get fast food workers aren't the smartest of people but really? Granted I don't know what was really said over the phone and only have the movie phone call and it probably was exaggerated for the movie. Overall though I wouldn't call the movie wonderful but it was pretty good.

[rage patton]

The Kick-Ass 2 trailer is pretty great.

[SlowMotionApocalypse]

Rocky IV best movie of 1985

[FEELS]

The Kick-Ass 2 trailer is pretty great.

Haha hell yeah, loved the first one. And wow I had no idea that was Jim Carrey until it said so.

[ThatGirl]

^ That looks awesome! Must see for sure. The first one was great.

[tyles]

Rocky IV best movie of 1985

Rocky IV is a terrible film. Both III and IV are where the series really flies off the rails. Suddenly, after II, where the dude couldn't even read, he's smart in III (not to mention cocky) and in IV, he's damn-near a superhero. Bare in mind that that I and II had a gritty look to it, but by III and IV, it's all super-nice looking and super-80's. Throw in the fact that the plot structures of III and IV are virtually identical - tough new fighter arrives on the scene, inadvertently kills a friend of Rocky's in the process, Rocky trains really hard, digs down deep, and improbably defeats new fighter.

The difference here is that at least in III, the first third of the film is over the top on purpose to show us how far from reality Rocky is, until his defeat brings him to down to earth, and the rest of the film returns to a reality closer to where we had been before (though Rocky is still inexplicably smart). IV is pure cheese from frame one and never stops. The Cold War is fought and won by Stallone, but not before some pretty clichéd training montages, complete with that "Hearts on Fire" 80's relic blasting. Oh, and can we mention Paulie's new robot? Hate Part V all you want for almost ending the series on a slight downer, lame Don King-esque characters and all, but at least it didn't feel like a cartoon.

[tyles]

The Kick-Ass 2 trailer is pretty great.

Kick-Ass was a movie I wanted to like and didn't. Maybe it's because I don't think highly of Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic.

[Drinkey McDrinkerstein]

I also didn't love the movie, but it's very entertaining, and is one of the only occasions where I thought the movie was much, much better than the source material. I hate mark Millar, thought the book was garbage. James Gunn's Super is a far superior movie.

[xanman86]

The Kick Ass 2 trailer was a lot of fun.

I'm so excited to see the Veronica Mars Movie kick starter at over $1.5 million in just a few hours!

[rage patton]

Kick-Ass was a movie I wanted to like and didn't. Maybe it's because I don't think highly of Mark Millar, who wrote the original comic.

I also didn't love the movie, but it's very entertaining, and is one of the only occasions where I thought the movie was much, much better than the source material. I hate mark Millar, thought the book was garbage. James Gunn's Super is a far superior movie.

This is interesting. I thought Kick-Ass looked terrible and didn't want to see it at all. I somehow ended up watching the film and loved it. I only found out afterwards it was actually based on a comic book. Either way, very excited for the sequel.

[chbludevil]

Rocky IV is a terrible film. Both III and IV are where the series really flies off the rails. Suddenly, after II, where the dude couldn't even read, he's smart in III (not to mention cocky) and in IV, he's damn-near a superhero. Bare in mind that that I and II had a gritty look to it, but by III and IV, it's all super-nice looking and super-80's. Throw in the fact that the plot structures of III and IV are virtually identical - tough new fighter arrives on the scene, inadvertently kills a friend of Rocky's in the process, Rocky trains really hard, digs down deep, and improbably defeats new fighter.

The difference here is that at least in III, the first third of the film is over the top on purpose to show us how far from reality Rocky is, until his defeat brings him to down to earth, and the rest of the film returns to a reality closer to where we had been before (though Rocky is still inexplicably smart). IV is pure cheese from frame one and never stops. The Cold War is fought and won by Stallone, but not before some pretty clichéd training montages, complete with that "Hearts on Fire" 80's relic blasting. Oh, and can we mention Paulie's new robot? Hate Part V all you want for almost ending the series on a slight downer, lame Don King-esque characters and all, but at least it didn't feel like a cartoon.

What the hell are you talking about? Rocky IV is fucking sweet. Saying Rocky IV is a terrible film is one of the most un-american things I've ever heard.