Mud Cake
God
I mean the guy had a bomb, but who would have thought "cut off the hand that is holding the trigger. Loved how that guy got what's coming to him in the end.
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jase
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I just watched The Breakfast Club for the first time. Dunno why it took me so long to see it, as it was awesome. It was so relatable, the characters felt like people I knew in high school which says a lot as the film was made in the 80's and I went to high school in the 00's. It's timeless 
tarn_seiche
Give Us Live Action BB
It has been a really thin season for movies. Don't they know it is Oscar season?
I didn't mind Benjamin Button - the first part of the movie relies on Brad Pitt's growing maturity as an actor and the last part relies on the extreme pulchritude that got him into movies in the first place (but his beauty does strange things to my judgement - I thought he was sensational in 'Troy', which simply can't be true.) Benjimin Button is an interesting story to start off with, and updating it to include Katrina works quite well. The camera work is beautifully done. Unusually, I think it is Cate who drops the ball a bit on this one, her heart does not seem to be in it. The dancer who plays Daisy dancing in the bandstand really caught what was essential and interesting about Daisy, and Cate seemed languid, like she was just walking through the part because they paid her lots of money. Or maybe she was sullenly playing the directors version of the part, against her own interpretation. It is a shame, because the whole plot revolves around Daisy- if she was playing any other part, she might get away with a less than inspired performance. As it is, all the smaller parts are played unusually well, which makes it all the more obvious that what is lacking is a Daisy that can pull the story all together for us.
Still it is better than Marley and Me - from what I can gather, the story is of a man who opts for ordinary suburban life with a wife, then a dog, then a family, and while he watches his friend live his dream of becoming a serious investigative journalist, he churns out the most readable and hilarious bi-weekly column on the trials of family life with the worst dog in the world, becoming the most popular columnist in Miami and eventually making so much money he can afford to move into a McMansion of renos blossoming out of the vilest little stone cottage I ever saw, in a place where the weather is really rotten.
Unfortunately we don't even get a quote from the column in the movie script. It is basically about the ordinary family and career in limbo that the column was based on, and if it wasn't for the dogs that play Marley, it wouldn't be watchable.
There is only one scene where the human actors are at all convincing (the heartbreaking scene with just Jennifer and Marley in it, if you have already seen it). There is only one human character that is at all convincing (Alan Arkin as Arnie Klein). The kids are so pasteboard that it would be hard for a good actor to make anything of their parts - as it is, it is hard to tell one from the other.
Most of the time, I was checking out Jen's new eye lift, and trying to work out if they had both got new nose jobs ( Jen's nose was a little swollen and seemed to have a new slightly upward tilt, although it was as big as ever; Owen's seems straighter than it used to be, in fact it looked absolutely straight when it was viewed from the right profile, and the crease of the bent part of the left profile seemed more pronounced, and the uncreased parts seemed straighter and there seemed to be lots of concealer and even plastic skin around to cover the bruising - but I can't be sure it was cosmetic, and why would a guy with a nose like that attempt to get a nose job, but make it look like his nose was still smashed all over his face anyway? )
They have both definitely got an oval of botox in the middle of their foreheads- Jen does a lot of wrinkling the brow to show that she can still make expressions with the wrinkles at the sides of her forehead. They also both do a lot of walking crab-wise and wearing clothes that conceal their waistlines. This might just be to conceal middle aged spread, but I did briefly wonder if it was attempts to conceal the first signs of a baby bump (for Jen, that is: with Owen it is clearly a combination of middle age and camera consciousness) - although she is extremely toned and I only wish I was that skinny, and there was a shot of her abdomen that looked sucked in but not very large at all, the only large bit was the pumped abs- like she does three hundred crunches a day, every day (or maybe it was the abdomen of a stand-in that was spray tanned exactly the same colour?). Poor girl, having to show her stomach in every movie and still not quashing baby bump speculators. And how does she expect to get credibility as a film actress if she plays parts where the character has her name?
These considerations helped me to keep interested as the plot was pulled through its very predictable course by Marley (played by 27 dogs, only one of which is credited). My favourite actor was Old Marley, although I thought he hammed it up a bit in his final scene - I mean, he is not Hamlet; there is no Laerties, no bad guys, no unfinished business to give one last stab at; when he goes down, he goes down alone - but Old Marley (possibly also known as Clyde) plays the scene like Laurence Olivier.
I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast. When there are no more dog scenes, I callously reverted to observing the work of plastic surgeons, the work of the human actors not being equal to it.
Yes Man was about the same - some funny moments, a lot of not really funny moments, seriously flawed and predictable plot, lacklustre acting (especially by Bradley Cooper), excellent performers wasted (especially Rhys Darby - who played Murray the manager in Flight of the Conchords, and plays Norman the manager in this one, and Terrence Stamp who has the indignity of playing an eponymous character but does it very well.)
Frost/Nixon was well played, but obviously meant to be a play, not a film. Frank Langella way too handsome, tall and dark to look like Nixon. Martin Sheen looked too prime ministerial to play Frost. The script was sycophantically kind to Sir David, when the credit should have gone more to James Reston Jnr, whose solid research saved the day. Still, it is hard to turn a trip to the library to dig diligently deep into senate inquires, into a drama - much harder than the jet setting lifestyle of a TV star. It reminded me of how truly glamorous 747's used to be- with the upstairs bar, superb service and spacious seating. And I never knew David Frost was the executive producer of the lovely childrens film 'The Slipper and the Rose'. But mentioning that film did remind me that 'All the Presidents Men' was screening at the same time, and this was the film of the book of the investigation that lead to the articles in the Washington Post that had Nixon indicted and forced to resign for fraud.
It was all over, red rover by the time Frost whipped out his check book and gave Nixon more than half a million to make Frost look something like a real journalist by cashing in on the interviewing Nixon game just after the story of the hard bitten serious journalists that brought Nixon down had earnt its four Oscars. (All the Presidents Men is still a great movie, by the way.)
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I have Loved You So Long) is a lovely, sensitive but very slow moving film. It would be perfect except that the characters are so superbly played and the moments of suspense and mystery so slowly drip-fed to you, that you can very quickly have the whole plot figured out, and you find yourself waiting for the next little hint or clue, and the next, and the next, muttering to yourself "But you could see that from her face in the first scene, and you knew that from the way she stood up in second scene. So whats next? Whats next?" and you feel like a chipmunk on caffeine because the pace of this movie is so unhurried.
Still, it is a sweet love story, and would not be at all predictable if the actors had not been so superbly in character. And it would probably lose some of its character if you watched it on fast forward.
The best movie I have seen all year is definitely Slumdog Millionaire - the child actors are cute and convincing, the grown-up actors brilliant, the story is engrossing, if not completely believable.
How does a boy from the slums of Mumbai know the winning questions on 'Who wants to be a millionaire'? (The police have dragged him in to interrogate him on this matter, on the eve of his final appearance on the show.)
Each question serves as a starting point for a flashback into a vignette from the life of a Mumbai 'slumdog', and each vignette illustrates an aspect of the recent history of India. It is too gritty, short and free of song and dance numbers to be a Bollywood film, but it is not so gritty and free of melodrama and song and dance as a Hollywood film. There was a few things that bothered me a little about the story: it was a British film pretending to be an Indian film, which always smacks of cultral imperialism (so our slumdog implausibly sees and presumably is touched by a moment in Glucks opera 'Orfeo ed Euridice', for example, and theres a sequence with M.I.A's 'Paper Planes' in the soundtrack, played without a trace of irony); the love story is a little too sweet; the main villian 'Maman' looks disturbingly like Che Guevara (although I suppose he can't help that); the Ringa-ringa song I have heard done in another movie, in the early nineties, and better, only I can't remember the movie.
Still it is easy to overcome these little vexations because the film as a whole, and the cinematography in particular, is so good. It is an excellent all rounder with an uplifting ending (followed by a dance sequence, with the star showing he can dance as well as any Bollywood hero). I hope there are more like this and fewer like Yes Man in 2009.
I didn't mind Benjamin Button - the first part of the movie relies on Brad Pitt's growing maturity as an actor and the last part relies on the extreme pulchritude that got him into movies in the first place (but his beauty does strange things to my judgement - I thought he was sensational in 'Troy', which simply can't be true.) Benjimin Button is an interesting story to start off with, and updating it to include Katrina works quite well. The camera work is beautifully done. Unusually, I think it is Cate who drops the ball a bit on this one, her heart does not seem to be in it. The dancer who plays Daisy dancing in the bandstand really caught what was essential and interesting about Daisy, and Cate seemed languid, like she was just walking through the part because they paid her lots of money. Or maybe she was sullenly playing the directors version of the part, against her own interpretation. It is a shame, because the whole plot revolves around Daisy- if she was playing any other part, she might get away with a less than inspired performance. As it is, all the smaller parts are played unusually well, which makes it all the more obvious that what is lacking is a Daisy that can pull the story all together for us.
Still it is better than Marley and Me - from what I can gather, the story is of a man who opts for ordinary suburban life with a wife, then a dog, then a family, and while he watches his friend live his dream of becoming a serious investigative journalist, he churns out the most readable and hilarious bi-weekly column on the trials of family life with the worst dog in the world, becoming the most popular columnist in Miami and eventually making so much money he can afford to move into a McMansion of renos blossoming out of the vilest little stone cottage I ever saw, in a place where the weather is really rotten.
Unfortunately we don't even get a quote from the column in the movie script. It is basically about the ordinary family and career in limbo that the column was based on, and if it wasn't for the dogs that play Marley, it wouldn't be watchable.
There is only one scene where the human actors are at all convincing (the heartbreaking scene with just Jennifer and Marley in it, if you have already seen it). There is only one human character that is at all convincing (Alan Arkin as Arnie Klein). The kids are so pasteboard that it would be hard for a good actor to make anything of their parts - as it is, it is hard to tell one from the other.
Most of the time, I was checking out Jen's new eye lift, and trying to work out if they had both got new nose jobs ( Jen's nose was a little swollen and seemed to have a new slightly upward tilt, although it was as big as ever; Owen's seems straighter than it used to be, in fact it looked absolutely straight when it was viewed from the right profile, and the crease of the bent part of the left profile seemed more pronounced, and the uncreased parts seemed straighter and there seemed to be lots of concealer and even plastic skin around to cover the bruising - but I can't be sure it was cosmetic, and why would a guy with a nose like that attempt to get a nose job, but make it look like his nose was still smashed all over his face anyway? )
They have both definitely got an oval of botox in the middle of their foreheads- Jen does a lot of wrinkling the brow to show that she can still make expressions with the wrinkles at the sides of her forehead. They also both do a lot of walking crab-wise and wearing clothes that conceal their waistlines. This might just be to conceal middle aged spread, but I did briefly wonder if it was attempts to conceal the first signs of a baby bump (for Jen, that is: with Owen it is clearly a combination of middle age and camera consciousness) - although she is extremely toned and I only wish I was that skinny, and there was a shot of her abdomen that looked sucked in but not very large at all, the only large bit was the pumped abs- like she does three hundred crunches a day, every day (or maybe it was the abdomen of a stand-in that was spray tanned exactly the same colour?). Poor girl, having to show her stomach in every movie and still not quashing baby bump speculators. And how does she expect to get credibility as a film actress if she plays parts where the character has her name?
These considerations helped me to keep interested as the plot was pulled through its very predictable course by Marley (played by 27 dogs, only one of which is credited). My favourite actor was Old Marley, although I thought he hammed it up a bit in his final scene - I mean, he is not Hamlet; there is no Laerties, no bad guys, no unfinished business to give one last stab at; when he goes down, he goes down alone - but Old Marley (possibly also known as Clyde) plays the scene like Laurence Olivier.
I wish I could say the same for the rest of the cast. When there are no more dog scenes, I callously reverted to observing the work of plastic surgeons, the work of the human actors not being equal to it.
Yes Man was about the same - some funny moments, a lot of not really funny moments, seriously flawed and predictable plot, lacklustre acting (especially by Bradley Cooper), excellent performers wasted (especially Rhys Darby - who played Murray the manager in Flight of the Conchords, and plays Norman the manager in this one, and Terrence Stamp who has the indignity of playing an eponymous character but does it very well.)
Frost/Nixon was well played, but obviously meant to be a play, not a film. Frank Langella way too handsome, tall and dark to look like Nixon. Martin Sheen looked too prime ministerial to play Frost. The script was sycophantically kind to Sir David, when the credit should have gone more to James Reston Jnr, whose solid research saved the day. Still, it is hard to turn a trip to the library to dig diligently deep into senate inquires, into a drama - much harder than the jet setting lifestyle of a TV star. It reminded me of how truly glamorous 747's used to be- with the upstairs bar, superb service and spacious seating. And I never knew David Frost was the executive producer of the lovely childrens film 'The Slipper and the Rose'. But mentioning that film did remind me that 'All the Presidents Men' was screening at the same time, and this was the film of the book of the investigation that lead to the articles in the Washington Post that had Nixon indicted and forced to resign for fraud.
It was all over, red rover by the time Frost whipped out his check book and gave Nixon more than half a million to make Frost look something like a real journalist by cashing in on the interviewing Nixon game just after the story of the hard bitten serious journalists that brought Nixon down had earnt its four Oscars. (All the Presidents Men is still a great movie, by the way.)
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I have Loved You So Long) is a lovely, sensitive but very slow moving film. It would be perfect except that the characters are so superbly played and the moments of suspense and mystery so slowly drip-fed to you, that you can very quickly have the whole plot figured out, and you find yourself waiting for the next little hint or clue, and the next, and the next, muttering to yourself "But you could see that from her face in the first scene, and you knew that from the way she stood up in second scene. So whats next? Whats next?" and you feel like a chipmunk on caffeine because the pace of this movie is so unhurried.
Still, it is a sweet love story, and would not be at all predictable if the actors had not been so superbly in character. And it would probably lose some of its character if you watched it on fast forward.
The best movie I have seen all year is definitely Slumdog Millionaire - the child actors are cute and convincing, the grown-up actors brilliant, the story is engrossing, if not completely believable.
How does a boy from the slums of Mumbai know the winning questions on 'Who wants to be a millionaire'? (The police have dragged him in to interrogate him on this matter, on the eve of his final appearance on the show.)
Each question serves as a starting point for a flashback into a vignette from the life of a Mumbai 'slumdog', and each vignette illustrates an aspect of the recent history of India. It is too gritty, short and free of song and dance numbers to be a Bollywood film, but it is not so gritty and free of melodrama and song and dance as a Hollywood film. There was a few things that bothered me a little about the story: it was a British film pretending to be an Indian film, which always smacks of cultral imperialism (so our slumdog implausibly sees and presumably is touched by a moment in Glucks opera 'Orfeo ed Euridice', for example, and theres a sequence with M.I.A's 'Paper Planes' in the soundtrack, played without a trace of irony); the love story is a little too sweet; the main villian 'Maman' looks disturbingly like Che Guevara (although I suppose he can't help that); the Ringa-ringa song I have heard done in another movie, in the early nineties, and better, only I can't remember the movie.
Still it is easy to overcome these little vexations because the film as a whole, and the cinematography in particular, is so good. It is an excellent all rounder with an uplifting ending (followed by a dance sequence, with the star showing he can dance as well as any Bollywood hero). I hope there are more like this and fewer like Yes Man in 2009.
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josephine
Guest
Watched Yes Man last night - not so funny and Jim Carey is looking really old. I took the 11 year old and he thought it great
Nice to see you back, Tarn_seiche.
You put your finger on why Benjamin Button fails - cause Blanchett fails. The start of the film, the early days of Button in depression era New Orleans, was good. The audience loved the lightening scenes, and there was much Fincher technical cleverness to admire. But yeah, without Blanchett to pull things together...
I was starting to wonder what the deal was with Yes Man. To me, it seems like a step backward for Jim Carrey. Like he's giving up on dramatic roles, but needs the money, so has churned out yet another gimmicky comedy.
You put your finger on why Benjamin Button fails - cause Blanchett fails. The start of the film, the early days of Button in depression era New Orleans, was good. The audience loved the lightening scenes, and there was much Fincher technical cleverness to admire. But yeah, without Blanchett to pull things together...
I was starting to wonder what the deal was with Yes Man. To me, it seems like a step backward for Jim Carrey. Like he's giving up on dramatic roles, but needs the money, so has churned out yet another gimmicky comedy.
R
rowee
Guest
I haven't seen it yet, but Yes Man's plot sounds exactly like Liar Liar's!
bb-06
Well-Known Member
Why? They're nothing alike...at all. Liar Liar is about a guy who physically can't tell a lie...Yes Man is about a guy who decides to take up every chance life presents him with. I really don't see any similarity between the two movies at all.
Last movie I saw is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's absolutely dreadful. Very suited for snooty people because, just like them, the movie itself tries to act as intelligent and complicated as it can possibly can be when it's just vacuous and stupid.
Uninteresting performances by Pitt and Blanchett, the two main characters aren't actually characters. They have no personality (which probably explains the bad performances by two great actors). The story goes nowhere. It attempts to be a Forrest Gump type plot where the main character goes through EVERYTHING and always comes back to the love of his life...but the romance is not interesting. The events he goes through are not interesting. There's zero emotion to the entire thing...
I just don't understand why it's getting all this attention. It's an interesting concept, but a crap movie. "Yes Man" had more complexity, emotion and meaning. This movie blows.
J
jase
Guest
Clerks.
It's a very intelligent and hilarious film. There's so much dialogue though, it's hard to take it in sometimes. But I think that's a good thing as it will add to the rewatchability of the movie. Ah, it was great.
It's a very intelligent and hilarious film. There's so much dialogue though, it's hard to take it in sometimes. But I think that's a good thing as it will add to the rewatchability of the movie. Ah, it was great.
J
josephine
Guest
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I have Loved You So Long) - I really enjoyed it. The acting was excellent and I was totally drawn in from start to finish. I was never bored or restless but it's one of those films that takes it's good time getting to what you really want to know "Why did she kill her son?". Go and see it, you won't be wasting you money.
R
Ravenau1
Guest
There's nothing on at the moment that really appeals to me 
, and the only movies coming out this year that I'm really excited about are Watchmen and Che/The Argentine/Guerilla (depending on how it's released).
, and the only movies coming out this year that I'm really excited about are Watchmen and Che/The Argentine/Guerilla (depending on how it's released).
D
DanielaAshleigh
Guest
Bride Wars.
J
jase
Guest
I didn't like Vicky Cristina Barcelona much. I felt the narration, while needed, was over the top and just annoying in parts. I don't know, it just felt slightly pretentious to me. I'm not really a Woody fan anyway. Penelope Cruz was really great though, I hope she's nominated for an Oscar for her performance.
I love the name.
J
jase
Guest
I always thought it was an odd title, but it works I guess.
Se7en
It's so good. The last 10 minutes is basically the best thing to ever be put on film, apart from Brad Pitt's hammy acting. Brilliant twist, mostly brilliant acting, brilliant direction. I'd give it 5 stars, Margaret.
Se7en
It's so good. The last 10 minutes is basically the best thing to ever be put on film, apart from Brad Pitt's hammy acting. Brilliant twist, mostly brilliant acting, brilliant direction. I'd give it 5 stars, Margaret.
G
Goldenberry
Guest
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
7/10. I really like period pieces from the first half of last century. The narrative starts on Armistace day 1918 and works forward to the early 1980s - and good characters and acting, and Brad Pit as firstly an old man, and later on a 15 year old boy, was kind of funny. But as you can tell from that, it loses points for its predicitability.
On DVD - "The Last King of Scotland".
Not bad, Forrest Whittaker was awesome, and it was thankfully short. By the end of the film I was kind of rubbing my nipples - if you've seen the movie, you'll know why. Also, I'm glad the Israelis stormed Entebbi airport, Edi Amin deserved it. 7.5/10
7/10. I really like period pieces from the first half of last century. The narrative starts on Armistace day 1918 and works forward to the early 1980s - and good characters and acting, and Brad Pit as firstly an old man, and later on a 15 year old boy, was kind of funny. But as you can tell from that, it loses points for its predicitability.
On DVD - "The Last King of Scotland".
Not bad, Forrest Whittaker was awesome, and it was thankfully short. By the end of the film I was kind of rubbing my nipples - if you've seen the movie, you'll know why. Also, I'm glad the Israelis stormed Entebbi airport, Edi Amin deserved it. 7.5/10
G
Goldenberry
Guest
Also, when in NZ recently, the movie viewing capital of the world, I saw these DVDs:
"The Motorcyle Diaries". What can I say, I love this film, it's scenery, Argentina, its soundtrack, its humanity. 8.5/10, and the rest of the family hadn't seen it. My dad spent the first 10 minutes moaning about having to read subtitles (it's in Spanish of course), but ended up really liking the flick. Looking forward to the new film "Che" coming up, about the later phase of Che Gueverra's life.
"The Ruins". Don't bother. 90210 meets mysterious Mayan ruins in a South American jungle, with no explanation whatsoever why a strange creeper vine would want to grow onto and into human flesh. There was some ghoulish value in watching the vine growing inside people, but all in all 4/10 and that's probably generous.
"The Motorcyle Diaries". What can I say, I love this film, it's scenery, Argentina, its soundtrack, its humanity. 8.5/10, and the rest of the family hadn't seen it. My dad spent the first 10 minutes moaning about having to read subtitles (it's in Spanish of course), but ended up really liking the flick. Looking forward to the new film "Che" coming up, about the later phase of Che Gueverra's life.
"The Ruins". Don't bother. 90210 meets mysterious Mayan ruins in a South American jungle, with no explanation whatsoever why a strange creeper vine would want to grow onto and into human flesh. There was some ghoulish value in watching the vine growing inside people, but all in all 4/10 and that's probably generous.