TV/Movies Megathread

[Sophie Scholl]

I know.  I'm an idiot.   At least I did end up seeing it though!

[The Larch]

Dafoe is awesome in that film.

[Josephus]

FX begins The Americans today. Taking place in the 80s, in America, it's about a normal family that happens to be sleeper KGB agents. Has potential. Think I'll watch it. Obviously a Homeland ripoff, but w'll see how they do it without cell phones and Internet.

[jimmy olsen]

I thought there was a bit of a disconnect in the tones of the violence. The shootouts, and the violence by the heroes is almost cartoonishly overblown with buckets of blood. At the same time, the violence fostered upon the slaves is gritty and realistic, and tries to avoid too much detail. Some of the shots kinda wanted to make me shout "SYMBOLISM!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!" in Film-Brain-style, because they were so unsubtle - like the one with the blood spraying over the white cotton.

That disconnect was purposeful and symbolic in and of itself.
[spoiler]
Big Daddy's blood on his white horse, Candie's blood on his white flower, the overseers blood all over the white walls of Candyland, etc.[/spoiler]

[Josephus]

On an Alan Furst kick of late...and was thrilled to discover this...hopefully a Canadian channel picks this up or I may have to resort to other methods:

http://www.bbcamerica.com/spies-of-warsaw/

[Sheilbh]

Amour. Superb. Performances are stunning.

[Admiral Yi]

Watched most of Source Code the other night.  Sort of a reverse Minority Report.  The back story on how Jake Gyllenhall travels back in time made absolutely no sense to me.  But the production values are good (train blowing up in slow motion--several times) and Bridgette Moynihan looks molto yummy.

Zero connection to source code in the usual sense and for the life of me I can't figure out how they came up with that title.

[Barrister]

The new House of Cards becomes available on Netflix tomorrow. 

[Scipio]

The new House of Cards becomes available on Netflix tomorrow. 

Cannot fucking wait.

Fresh Air on NPR today is an interview with Spacey and Fincher re: House of Cards.

[Ideologue]

Watched most of Source Code the other night.  Sort of a reverse Minority Report.  The back story on how Jake Gyllenhall travels back in time made absolutely no sense to me.  But the production values are good (train blowing up in slow motion--several times) and Bridgette Moynihan looks molto yummy.

Zero connection to source code in the usual sense and for the life of me I can't figure out how they came up with that title.

I've also been confused as to where the title came from, but I really like the movie--even if it is no Moon, Zowie Bowie is pretty great and I expect a spectacular career.

***

Gladiator (2000).  Ridley Scott fucks up the timestream for the first time here, presenting a preposterously ahistorical historical epic.  Nevertheless, a finely made film that is great fun to watch.  A

The Magnificent Seven (1960).  Hadn't seen this in years, and I'm trying to get into Westerns, so I picked it up in a three-disc set with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at a pretty nifty price point.  Anyway, Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen are phenomenal, and everyone else is at least really good (even the punk kid who finds up fuck-marrying the hot Mexica chick).  The only thing that would've made this better is more blood.  I mean, like thirty or forty guys get shot, and there's almost no red in the whole movie.  But such was the era?  A

Predator (1987).  A key protagonist in the evolution of 80s bad-ass cinema, Arnold Schwarzennegger and friends fight a powerful vagina.  But a serious question: how did Predators get to build spaceships and other technology when their eyesight renders them almost completely blind in regards fine details or any object at room temperature?  Do they play by sense of smell? Anyway, I enjoyed the anti-hunting message of the film. A

Terminator 2 (1991).  And here we have what is in many ways the apotheosis of 80s bad-ass cinema, except it came out in the 90s, and they found room for a heart amidst all the other muscles.  A combination of amazing set-pieces and great, and in some cases perfect (cf. Robert Patrick), performances render a nearly flawless film.  Did you know there are people who think the thumbs up at the end was a bad idea?  Did they actually watch the movie? A+

Vanilla Sky (2001).  Cameron Crowe's remake of Spanishland's cool science fiction mind-fuck Abre Los Ojos, it sure is a lot better than Jerry MacGuire or Almost Famous, in that while it is about an asshole you want to punch in the face, the film does that for you courtesy of an 80mph car crash that relieves David Aames (Tom Cruise) of most of his face.  It's never uninteresting to watch his world and worldview collapse around him.  The final twist, while a little expositionary, really came out of nowhere the first time I saw it way back when; and it presents a choice to both David and the audience.  Stylishly made, sharply written, and enjoyable from start to finish.  But does swallowing someone's cum really mean something?  My empirical research suggests otherwise, Ms. Diaz.  A+

P.S. Kurt Russel don't make bad movies.

Valkyrie (2008).  It's a real shame that the forty or fifty minutes of footage establishing Stauffenberg and company as characters rather than gears within the plot of Operation Valkyrie were lost.  Otherwise, this would have been a potentially great movie.  I guess they reckoned all you'd need to identify with the good graf was a shared dislike of Adolf Hitler.  We all hate Hitler, right?  Sure we do!  B

War of the Worlds (2005).  War of the Worlds is a good story with a bad twist ending, dependent upon an alien invasion force that has mastered interstellar travel but is ignorant of the germ theory of disease.  The 2005 film adaptation only manages to be a well-made movie with a bad twist ending.  Usually my opinions tend to skew toward the positive, since I'm often talking about movies I decided to buy, and generally speaking I'm only buying movies that I know I like.  But sometimes I get movie because they come with other movies.  War of the Worlds came in a collection of other movies that I do enjoy--a Tom Cruise collection, actually (yes, yes, but it has Top Gun and Days of Thunder, and also Collateral and Minority Report, so all in all a good deal--and you know what, Tom Cruise is great, despite his personal foibles).  I didn't like WotW back in 2005, but I decided to give it another spin.

Guess what?  It's still a really disappointing movie that tries to have its cake (widespread mass destruction and apocalyptic tone) and eat it too (hardly a soul actually dies in this movie).  You can't really do that.  You can make a cool summer movie about America getting blown the fuck up--see Independence Day for a relatively recent and extremely successful go at this concept, or look to Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers for the ur-example.  Or you can script and shoot and CGI this alien invasion as seriously as you would, say, the Normandy invasion, but you must have consequences; you cannot send your idiot teenager character on a suicidal course of action in the middle of the film and then have him show up at the end because everything's all okay.  The difference between this and Saving Private Ryan?  In Saving Private Ryan, like most movies of this ilk, characters actually got hurt.

Fuck, even in Independence Day, Randy Quaid still died. C

P.S. I dunno if it's the blu ray transfer or an aesthetic choice, but this movie is grainier than Cracklin' Oat Bran.  Jesus.  The kids from Super 8 didn't make a movie this grainy.

Training Day (2005).  Ethan Hawke does not make bad movies either.  A

[Ed Anger]

I rooted for Otto Remer in Valkyrie.

[11B4V]

Watched Arthur this weekend. always great. Great sound track too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kftAQRl85Gs

[Darth Wagtaros]

The War of the Worlds remake sucked.  The characters deserved to get death rayed. The whole invasion itself was stupid. Lightning bolts or something?

I liked Abre los Ojos better than Vanilla Sky.

[Eddie Teach]

Watched most of Source Code the other night.  ... Bridgette Moynihan looks molto yummy.

Almost as good as Michelle Monaghan. 

[Admiral Yi]

Almost as good as Michelle Monaghan. 

Close enough for government work.