"January Movie Thread is here, Like a sexton by her grave

[Rocky Hillian]

Watched Rise of the Guardians last week. It was surprisingly pretty good. I guess, I didn't have much expectations, but it exceeded them. It was very original.

Watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, too. I can't stand Tom Cruise*, and this didn't change that feeling at all. I feel bad for Jeremy Renner. He could be an excellent dramatic actor. Instead he has decided to become an action star. He should be better than that.

*I do give him props for Tropic Thunder, though.

[toby]

Beasts of the Southern Wild. WTF. How did that movie not get better acclaim? The mere fact that it caused a person watching it with us to utter "There are no people in this country who live that way" is endorsement enough.

[abalene]

the afflicted- based on the true story of theresa knorr and the horrific things she did to her family. unfortunately, they soft-peddled the religious aspects of the motive quite a bit.

[mte]

recently:

alps, the weird second feature (second weird feature?) from the director of dogtooth. lee g mentioned it—sort of magic realist fable-ish thing about a group of people who impersonate the deceased for loved ones.

dredd, a pretty kickass (and spot-on) adaptation of the superviolent british comic series. bloody and grimly funny, and the start of a franchise that will never be, because it tanked at the box office.

[abalene]

god bless america - wickedly funny satire.

[jfm]

god bless america - wickedly funny satire.

I have that in the Netflix queue, sort of curious about it.

We finally watched Trollhunter, which was lots of fun as expected -- but in unexpected ways. Smart and funny and oddly mournful. Which may just be another way of saying "Scandinavian." (Also, la fille informs me that the guy who plays the trollhunter is a controversial Marxist comedian in Norway. Huh.)



Last night we started The Dark Knight Snoozes or whatever it's called. We quit after 40 minutes or so because it was so dull. I know I've slagged Christopher Nolan on here before, but seriously, this guy cannot make movies. I don't mean I just don't like his movies, I mean I think he is fundamentally not very good at using the medium. There is so little imagination and intuition in his staging and editing that even the action scenes barely have a pulse. Watch any given exchange between two characters, it's all just medium close-up shot-reverse shot, like a soap opera. I guess he gets away with it because he lights everything dimly and paces it slowly and uses lugubrious, moody music, so that it kind of seems of "serious" or something if you're not paying much attention.

I won't even get into the narrative incoherence and likely moral repellence of the thing, because I didn't watch enough to know how it turns out. But on the front end it gave all appearances of the same kind of quasi-fascist nonsense of the previous film.

[toby]

Last night we started The Dark Knight Snoozes or whatever it's called. We quit after 40 minutes or so because it was so dull. I know I've slagged Christopher Nolan on here before, but seriously, this guy cannot make movies. I don't mean I just don't like his movies, I mean I think he is fundamentally not very good at using the medium. There is so little imagination and intuition in his staging and editing that even the action scenes barely have a pulse. Watch any given exchange between two characters, it's all just medium close-up shot-reverse shot, like a soap opera. I guess he gets away with it because he lights everything dimly and paces it slowly and uses lugubrious, moody music, so that it kind of seems of "serious" or something if you're not paying much attention.

I won't even get into the narrative incoherence and likely moral repellence of the thing, because I didn't watch enough to know how it turns out. But on the front end it gave all appearances of the same kind of quasi-fascist nonsense of the previous film.

Such a bad movie. Last night, I finally got around to Slovenka (A Call Girl). It's on Netflix. Because of my research, people thought I should see this. A Slovenian college student moonlights as a 200EUR a trick call girl, deals with a mother who hates her, a depressed father, a married man who loves her, pimps, a caring best friend, the police, and fucks her father's really fat best friend, who stiff her for the money. Anyhow, from the outside, it's got a nice feminist anti-hero thing going, but from within it is a complete sexist satire as I think every Slovenian man sees every young Slovenian woman as a girl whose mother hates her, has a depressed 70's era father, is up to something immoral and will do anything for money. It can't go gritty as, well, Slovenia isn't gritty for Slovenes. If you are jugovici, then that's another matter. So it plays a "big city" (Ljubljana) vs rural town (the small town of Krsko). Ljubljana is about the size of Knoxville. Doesn't really work. One thing I loved was the language stuff in it as people in Ljubljana speak an incomprehensible mishmash of Slovene, German, English and slang. Imagine a Slavic version of the language being spoken in Blade Runner. The actress who plays Sasha (naturally) is pretty and brooding, but the best performance is by the father who captures sad, broke and lonely Slovenian guy perfectly. The movie closes with a Zappa song as only a Slovene could misunderstand a Zappa song. The other good performance is by the fat friend, who I actually know through the Ministry of Culture. Check it out if only to see the sights. There's a new "Eastern European" channel on Netflix.

[Lee G]

Most recently I watched Forty Guns, a Sam Fuller Western that I'd somehow never gotten to before, and holy crap, the thing is just coconuts—stylistically berserk, great script, it's a quasi-musical, it's hilarious here and there, it's jammed with sexual tension and how-did-they-get-away-with-it banter, there's a credible tornado scene that Fuller somehow whipped up for a nickel, plus 49-year-old Barbara Stanwyck being awesome and doing her own stunts, including being dragged by a horse, a scene of which she reportedly did three takes. This is now it starts:



I also saw Looper and Cosmopolis, and wrote about them over here.

And I watched Miss Bala, about a would-be Mexican beauty queen who gets mixed up with cartel dudes. Good, but not the feel-good hit of the winter, you could say.

[mte]

walter hill's supremely excellent 1978 thriller the driver. better, in my mind, than drive, and it has one of the best car chases i've ever seen.

[JMG]

Saw this over the weekend. I liked it in a predictible kinda way. For some reason it reminded me of Network even though they aren't the same.

god bless america - wickedly funny satire.