The old movie thread: ratings and discussion' or some shiz

I liked Fox in "Party of Five". He played a good "asshole big brother":: I hate his character on LOST and with each role, it looks like he's just playing himself. He had more range on "Party of Five". He really is an asshole from all reports I've read and from what I saw on the set of LOST::

Forrest Whitaker always plays "whacked out" when the role doesn't require it. I thought he was overrated in Street Kings. Some people said his performance was "Denzel in Traning Day-esque". There is always an undercurrent where he seems to be "forcing it". IMHO, the last time I saw Forrest play a role and he wasn't "forcing it" was in Bloodsport::

Sigourney Weaver was there for recognition but it's been so long since she's done anything relevant that I don't think the young people recognize her, but then again, this movie was for the adult.

Dennis Quaid was good but not great, as usual.

 

The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford I thought this movie was pretty good overall. Certainly not fast paced, but then most westerns aren't. Pitt and Affleck both do pretty good jobs in this, though Affleck certainly played Ford like a homosexual...I guess that was the intent...otherwise it comes off as kinda peculiar. Rockwell gives an overlooked performance in this as well.

 

:laughing:

 

:laughing:


what good new releases on dvd are worth checking out?

 

The Bank Job 8/10

 

Very good movie. I give it a 9/10. It's about a Muslim who is in terror cells. Cheadle was great as always and Guy Pearce was convincing as an FBI agent chasing him.

 

Agree. That was a pretty good movie, even with Jason Stathan there giving you little chills that he might ruin an otherwise good movie. He didn't. Sure, they had to show him kicking some mobsters butt at the end just for the sake of his action fans, but that didn't spoiled the fun at all of a well made suspense thriller based on a true story. 8/10

 

THE MARRIED LIFE Set in the 1950's this film tries to recreate the film noir of the era. And it succeeds to a certain degree. Two best friends (Chris Cooper & Pierce Brosnan) meets casually to have a couple of drinks and the married guy (Cooper) confesses that he is having an affair with a much younger woman (Rachel McAdams playing the platinum blonde bombshell). Brosnan gets immediately infatuated with the younger woman and secretly wants to get her. Meanwhile the Cooper character wants to spare his frigid wife (Patricia Clarkson) the humilliation of a divorce...so he plots to kill her. The performances that truly carry the film are those of Cooper and Clarkson, who deserve an academy award nomination each. Brosnan is his usual suave with brief glimpses of emotion. McAdams sole role is just to look hot. Her character needed to be fleshed out more to be more interesting (we briefly hear that she is a widow, there was potential to develop more her character, but was wasted). Overall it do works as a suspense noir with a few little laughs here and there that some dumb critics recognized as 'comedy' thus it was tagged the wrong label of comedy. Last but not least, the music is excellent and very effective. I wish it was on cd because I want to get it. 8/10

 

Rendition It was pretty pedestrian given the subject matter and both Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal are rather forgettable in their roles. It did have a somewhat interesting movie-making twist in it.

 

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940) There are many versions of this tale. The original silent classic with Douglas Fairbanks, the Alexander Korda technicolor remake with Sabu and Conrad Veidt, one starring bodybuilder Steve Reeves and even a 70's version with Roddy Mcdowell and Kabir Bedi. My favorite is the Alexander Korda 1940 remake. It was a big budget production that spared no expenses on great costumes, sets, special effects, one great actor (Conrad Veidt as the evil vizier, Jaffar), one international sensation (Sabu, the teen wonder from India) and six A-list directors that took turns in this troubled production that, should have turned out to be a disaster, but instead became an instant classic. It tells the tale of King Amad (John Justin) who is overthrown from his throne and blinded by the evil grand vizier, Jaffar (Veidt). Amad befriends a teen rascal, Abu (Sabu), the thief of Bagdad, with whom he starts an epic adventure not only to regain his throne and get revenge, but to win the heart and save the life of a beautiful princess (June Duprez). The real hero is the title character, Abu. Like Kato in the Green Hornet, he always comes in time to rescue the rather inept king Amad. There are flying horses, magical toys, a giant spider, flying carpet and best of all, a giant genie in a bottle than instead being grateful to be set free has swar to kill the person that let's him loose! The special effects looks dated, but some of them are still very effective. Keep in mind that this is a 68 year old film. Still regarded as one of the best fantasy films ever made and one of the most influential movies in cinema history 9without it there would not had been any of the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films nor even Disney's ALADDIN, that borrows heavily from it (in the Disney cartoon film the monkey Apu sounds like Abu, the evil sorcerer grand vizier is also named Jaffar, Aladdin falls in love with princess Jazmin the same as Amad, and the Genie, while not quite as treacherous as the original, has a striking physical similarity). This is a great film that I watched again yesterday with my children and they loved it. 10/10

 

Bigger, Stronger, Faster: Interesting documentary on steroid and performance enhancing use in sports, and America as a whole. I enjoyed this one a lot.

I also saw A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Same director, David Cromberg, and both with Viggo Mortisen (whatever his name is). Both crime dramas. Eastern Promises was kind of a depressing movie. They were both pretty good, I enjoyed A History of Violence more. A History of Violence is about Viggo in a small-town who is being harassed by organized crime syndicates, and Eastern Promises deals with the Russian Mafia and Naomi Watts plays a mid-wife who's trying to track down the relatives of an orphan.

 

Agreed, both movies are good and I preferred A History Of Violence too

 

THE FALL - 8.5/10

Visually this is the best movie I have ever seen, and should be watched for this alone. I read this review before I watched and I could not agree more.

"Shot over several years and in several countries, the landscapes and liquid paintings that Tarsem has created are among some of the most stunning visuals you will ever see. He pulled this off in his previous work, 'The Cell', but with a much darker tone. It's such a unique dream-like style that we as the audience cannot escape it. It mesmerizes you and bewilders you at the same time."

PLOT from IMDB because Im too lazy/dumb:

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.

Anyone else seen this?

 

eastern promises is much better.

I saw In Brugges the other day. I loved the midget. I mean, dwarf.

 

The dwarf is actually the key to the ending of the movie.

 

Thinsg We Lost in the Fire Another great performance by Benicio Del Toro. I liked Berry in this more than in her role in Monster's Ball. Duchovny was not very good. The story was alright, parts of it seemed a bit out of place, some of it forced, other parts were pretty good.

 

yes, i know. :notallthere:

 

Well, you dont have to be this disrespectful by using :notallthere:

 

Rocky Balboa - I finally got around to watching this. Good lord, what a bad flick but for some reason I couldn't take my eyes of it. It was like watching a bad Kung Fu movie on Sunday afternoon on Channel 5 New York when I was a kid.

I can't quite understand why this movie got talked up by a lot of people. Rocky's kid was awful, Little Marie was awful, Rocky playing Jack Dempsey in his restaurant was awful, the vignettes from old Rocky movies was out of place and awful, Max Kellerman was awful, Lou Dibella was awful, Larry Merchant looked embarrassed to be there, Jim Lampley was his usual self, Joe Cortez can't even referee a fictional fight properly, the list goes on and on. The least objectionable thing in the whole movie was actually Antonio Tarver, believe it or not.

:dunno:

 

I think most liked this movie because it was an improvement from part 5

It gave the whole Rocky series a better ending.

I actually thought TArver was pretty bad. For a guy tha talks alot of shit and likes to sell himself to the media he is not a good actor.

 

maybe that's because he's only in the movie for like 10 minutes? haha

 

watched this several weeks ago while i was flying back from korea. i thought it was pretty good. solid performances by all. and yea, rachael mcadams was hot as usual.

 

saw 'the mist' the other day. good movie, but has the worst ending ever.

 

She's ugly.

 

No, I mean he was horrible in the time he was on screen.

 

I wanted to stop this movie so often, but I kept saying it wasn't going to be that much longer...might as well see how it ends.

Play it to the Bone was better.

 

Just about anything is an improvement from Rocky V, but it still didn't make this one any less of a boring POS waste of time. What made me laugh was the insistence from oh so many that this was the 2nd best film of the Rocky series.

I agree w/ NobleArt and disagree with you on Tarver. Not that his performance was Academy worthy or anything, but it didn't detract from the film all that much. It didn't add anything either... it was just there.

The shockers to me were Dibella, Max and Cortez - they were asked to literally play themselves, and they couldn't even get that right. ::

 

you are a homosexual

 

No, you just have bad taste.

 

I liked Rocky Balboa. :dunno:

I like Rachel McAdams too.

Saw City of Men. There was a TV show in Brazil of the same name, using some of the actors of City of God, and this is the movie version of it. Sort of a similar theme with the gang wars in the slums of Rio, but this one is not as violent and sick. Two main characters, and one's mission to find out who his father is, while the other one deals with taking care of his own son.

City of God is one of my favorites ever, so this sort of pales in comparison, but overall it was still a solid movie.