Last movie you watched

[erilaz]

Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003). Y'all should know by now that I have a thing for REALLY AWFUL MOVIES. Here's what a few IMDb reviewers have to say about it:

A friend of mine recently said it was as if a deer made a movie about human interaction, unable to comprehend what it is to be a human being.

Imagine a two-hour episode of "Red Shoe Diaries" written and directed by Balki from "Perfect Strangers".

Whilst all the actors in the film are bad – soft-core porn bad – Wiseau imbues the film with a kind of transcendent badness. He's not bad, so much as he is unaware of the rules of good.

"Oh hi Denny."

[erilaz]

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer -- A delightful screwball comedy from 1947, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and teenage Shirley Temple.

[Bakajo Nono]

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows
I didn't think it would be that much better than the first film, but it. was. amazing. Wonderful acting, wonderful direction. It exhilarated my mind xD So good guys, go see it! I might see it again today~

Other movies I've seen recently (meaning since I've been on break and have had nothing else to do l o l):
Chinatown
It concerns me that Roman Polanski can direct a character like Evelyn Mulwray and yet still do the crap he's done. But, a great film.
The King's Speech
Perfect.
True Grit
Also really good. Hailee Steinfeld!!
Ghost in the Shell
I really loved it. I didn't think I would because some reviews were a bit critical, but I loved the intricacy and the action sequences and the art in general. The nudity (thankfully) lost its novelty after a while. So unnecessary xD Oh Japan. (Kidding, I know it's not just Japan/I know I'm being a prude, leave me alone xD)
Strictly Ballroom
I just rewatched this movie because I love it xD
Gypsy
It was okay o_O I didn't like it as much as I expected myself to... very talented acting and performing, but... I don't know. It felt lacking.
The Princess Bride
This was my first time watching it! I can get the appeal, but the book is sooo much better guys. If there's anyone on the planet who hasn't seen the film yet, see it before you read the book so that your expectations aren't crushed xD It apparently makes the reading experience much better to have seen the film first, but the book by itself is so so good.
Do the Right Thing
Amazing.
8: The Mormon Proposition
A really well done documentary. Very hard to watch objectively. I know that there is, of course, a certain level of bias, but the arguments are sound and convincing and the footage is pretty heartbreaking.

Spoiler: show

It really resonated with me in that, I'm not mormon obv, but what my child (were I to have one) was gay? We--as in my family--don't talk about homosexuality, and if we do, it's in some offhand offensive way (not me, of course, but I'm too much of a coward to defend it against my family, so I'm just as bad. I did it once and nearly exploded at the level of ignorance my cousins are capable of. Ha, since then, I've had to significantly increase my threshold for tolerating their stupidity, but at the time I didn't know them as well/wasn't as capable of thinking for myself lol...) It's been mentioned by some religious experts in our sect as a bad habit needed to be avoided similar to drug addiction. Not exactly persecution, which is kind of? comforting? But the sheer level of discomfort the experts/scholars expressed when answering the question would have been comical in any other circumstance. Plus, it is my belief, although I don't have the evidence to back it up since, again, we don't talk about it, that the common person is not a scholar/expert and thus latches on more quickly to bigoted views. Anyway, so yes. What if my son/daughter was gay? Would I be courageous enough to speak up for them? Absolutely, but if my whole family turned against me, like so many of the families in the documentary, idk what I'd do with myself. In fact, I'm even concerned about future husband, whoever he may be. Anyway. Welcome to my brain.

The Fall
Wow, I do not understand the hate this movie gets. It's one of my favorites. So beautiful, both in imagery and in theme. Roy and Alexandria have an amazing chemistry as characters. They complement each other well. The story Roy tells doesn't seem disconnected at all to me, which is what a lot of people seem to complain about. It's very evidently Roy's story through the eyes of Alexandria, with her own interpretations in it and then by the climax it's a fusion of both of their stories. Highly recommended.

[erilaz]

The Princess Bride
This was my first time watching it! I can get the appeal, but the book is sooo much better guys. If there's anyone on the planet who hasn't seen the film yet, see it before you read the book so that your expectations aren't crushed xD It apparently makes the reading experience much better to have seen the film first, but the book by itself is so so good.

I love the movie, but yeah, the book is amazing.

The Fall
Wow, I do not understand the hate this movie gets. It's one of my favorites.

I still need to see that. It's on my list and in my Netflix queue. One of my friends really loves it.

Today I saw Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. It's a heartwarming documentary about Kevin Clash, the virtually unknown man behind the world-famous Muppet.

[youtube]8UbxkESLbM0[/youtube]

[Moh]

I wanna see The Fall. The cinematography looks stunning.

Anyway, I watched Bridesmaids (finally) and thought it was friggin' hilarious. Even if it was so wrong.

[erilaz]

Starstruck -- Gillian Armstrong's Australian new wave musical comedy from 1982.

[Bakajo Nono]

Hugo
I honestly didn't like it. Maybe it was because I was tired... or because of the company I was with... but it felt sluggish and the dialogue and development seemed a bit half-assed. Some parts felt rushed while others dragged... But the cinematography was truly very beautiful. But really, it was a movie with a bunch of different plot devices and no overall plot.

Or maybe I need to see it again, idk.

[erilaz]

Last theatrical film of 2011: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol -- A fun popcorn movie with plenty of over-the-top action scenes. I especially enjoyed the humor that Simon Pegg provided.

Last TV film of 2011/first TV film of 2012 (it was on from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.): The Corpse Vanishes -- A cheapo horror film from 1942, in which a mad scientist (Bela Lugosi) kidnaps young brides and extracts their glandular secretions in order to rejuvenate his 80-year-old wife.

First theatrical film of 2012: A Dangerous Method -- David Cronenberg's latest, starring Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung, Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, and Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, Jung's masochistic patient/student/mistress.

[Celedam]

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006) — Something I didn't know: Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980) were written as a single storyline and mostly shot back-to-back, but the producers didn't like the continuity so they got another director to shoot new scenes. Specifically, the entire opening with the terrorists at the Eiffel Tower, much of the trip to Niagara Falls, the giving up and then regaining of powers, and even the ending. "Dick" Donner (hey, he insists) threw a fit and disowned Superman II, at least until this new cut was done with his original footage.

Well, the producers were right and "Dick" was wrong. This cut is laughably bad at many points (I'm looking at you, Clark's Magically Morphing Hairstyle in the Honeymoon Suite), and while I understand why Donner believes his version does a better job of developing the relationships between Lois and Clark and between Jor-El and Kal-El, it just doesn't work. Donner forgot the mythology of Superman.

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Speed Racer (2008) — Better than I thought it would be, albeit with a strange fixation on drifting. Wonderfully psychedelic with lots of in-jokes and cartoon violence. Very much like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) in style, although not as good. (To be fair, few movies are as good as Scott Pilgrim, but whatever.)

Unfortunately, it failed at the box office for the same reason that Scott Pilgrim did: the target audience is a narrow band of Gen X'ers who are old enough to get the references but young enough to enjoy the goofiness. Reading the New Yorker's review just made me angry.

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Battle: Los Angeles (2011) — Terrible. Take the premise of Independence Day, re-do it in the style of Cloverfield, and then ruin it with every war movie cliché you can think of. In fact, you can imagine that was the pitch in some Hollywood producer's office. But at least Cloverfield was a fresh twist (at the time) and Independence Day had a healthy sense of humor about itself.

[Zunu]

^ The most interesting thing about that New Yorker article was that the reviewer is still nursing his twenty year boner over how "funky" and awesome Christina Ricci was when she was 13.