movie recommendations

[Jim di Griz]

Is that H+K movie any good?I only saw HK in Guantanamo (sp?) and it was pretty funny :)

Just seen the A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas and it's even more insane than the Guantanamo Bay one. It was originally set for 3-D but they released it as a normal film and boy did they go over the top with 3-D opportunities and even 3-D jokes. I think they were making a point about 3-D movies that have maybe two or possibly three scenes in them that use the effect to full advantage and then forget about it.

If you liked 1 or 2 then 3 is right up there with them and there are some real laugh-out-loud moments which catch you off guard, plus it has Danny Trejo in it and that is never bad, plus there are some good nods to other, completely unrelated films in there (well, what do you expect with a film about stoners...?)

cheers, mate  :-D I guess we'd enjoy about 80% or more of each other's video collection :)

I totally agree  :)

[Fiach]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll try to check it out this week :)

[Jim di Griz]

No worries Fiach - I hope you enjoy.

And now for something completely different...The Raven.

It's a film about Edgar Allan Poe's last days, very well played by John Cusack. I don't think it'd be classed as a spoiler to say that he gets involved in helping the police solve a string of murders based upon his own w@&k.

It's a very atmospheric film, though I did get annoyed at the occasional use of modern phrases; luckily these were very few, but it still annoyed me.

Good to see Mr Cusack doing something strong again.

[Art Blade]

I've always liked him as an actor :)

[Jim di Griz]

Avengers Assemble.

Bloody good movie, good story, good acting, great SFX. It was interesting to see so many superheroes in one movie and each one was given their chance to strut their stuff. The Thor guy (imo) has been watching too many Kenneth Brannagh movies for his own good, but he still carried off the character pretty well, The hulk was the best representation I have seen so far other than that, a great ensemble cast.

Some nice subtle humour, like Tony Stark wearing a Black Sabbath T-Shirt, shows that a fair degree of thought went into this movie.

You know when you have seen a good movie, when you walk out of the cinema, wondering how they will top it all in the next movie.

Fully agree - saw it last night and it seemed like Joss Whedon must have conferred with the script writers from the previous films as each character stayed as they had previously been portrayed. The Hulk was by far the best representation so far with some absolutely hilarious moments...especially the one where Loki tries to belittle the Hulk's ability to stop him; a demi-god. I was crying with laughter for much of the rest of the big fight.

There is also a beautiful little bit after the credits where they are all eating Shoarma.

Joss Whedon did good.

[Jim di Griz]

A bit of a double post, hopefully for a good reason  :)

Just been to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and had a good time. It has plenty of solid atmospere and the additional story thread woven in there was well done, keeping the pace high for the last half of the film.

Smaug is going to be spectacular. The recounting of how the Dwarves were driven from the mountain only showed brief glimpses and bits...just enough to whet the appetite  :-X

Also some of the set pieces such as the Dwarvish realm inside the mountain were stupendous and there was a glorious 'legolas moment' (without Legolas, of course) where belief needs to be suspended during the escape from the Goblin halls under the Misty Mountains - also providing an amazing set piece and a great escape sequence.

The only thing I didn't really like

Spoiler

was the revisting of such cheesy scenes as how the ring tumbled through the air in The Prancing Pony in LOTR I to land on Frodo's finger - yes, the same thing happens to Bilbo. There were a few but that was the one that stuck in my mind.

Otherwise a good film - not as epic as The Fellowship of the Ring but there again it isn't meant to be. Plenty of funny moments and the Dwarves are a right bunch of feisty characters, which is pretty much the way I remember them from the book. I'm glad Aiden Turner (Being Human) and James Nesbitt (amongst others, Jekyl) were added to the mix  :) which did add an element of Time Bandits to the proceedings...no, not because they were Dwarves, but the way they dressed and carried on amongst themselves, always fighting and being rambunctious. One or two looked like Ferengi, which was a bit disconcerting...

The Gollum sequence was sublime and to be relished, which was exactly what Mr Serkis did.

[Art Blade]

nice review, Jim :)

Oh, I'll give you a slap for knowing and (I assume) liking Time Bandits :) :-X

[Jim di Griz]

Absolutely love Time Bandits...waiter, plenty of ice!

Cheers Art  :)

[PZ]

nice, Jim, I've seen the advertisement for the Hobbit film and have wondered if it would worth it.  The LOTR series was actually the first film during which I haven't fallen asleep.  I'm ashamed to say that on my very first date with my wife (then sweetheart) I fell asleep in the movie theater.

[Art Blade]

and when you woke up you were married to her? :-()

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

 

[Art Blade]

Bourne's Legacy

I've just watched the BR version of the film which I originally did not intend to buy as it doesn't feature Jason Bourne at all but someone told me it was worth it.

It bloody is worth it. First time in a long while I watched such an intense and action-packed film. I was immediately immersed and taken away, from start to end. There were only very few "oh no, that is SO unrealistic" moments but hey, in the end it only helped to keep the pace at a top level.

GREAT action theatre  :) :-X

[Art Blade]

13 Assassins ... builds toward a forty minute frantic battle where the thirteen battle through two hundred Samurai to kill the warlord ... Oh, and the guy who plays the 13th, the woodsman is brilliant!

What an epic battle. The film is fantastic, and agree about the woodsman. What made me go "WHOA!!" was when they sent burning bulls through the village!!  ??? :-X

[Jim di Griz]

Glad you enjoyed  :) it was rather special and over the top in a casual kind of way.

I've yet to try the new Bourne film - will be doing that soon  :-X

[Art Blade]

I'm willing to bet that you're going to like that one, mate  :-D

[Jim di Griz]

Well, similar tastes and all that... ^-^ I loved the first, it was tight and fresh. The second was a lot of fun too, but more in a revengey kind of way  ;)

[Art Blade]

sounds as if you were in for two more films rather than one. There are four. :-D

[Jim di Griz]

That's right, I forgot about three...must be getting older than I remember  ^-^

[Art Blade]

Guys, it's been a while. I watched quite a few films in the meantime, none of them bad, but not one of them was worth it to be mentioned here. Until now -- past weekend I watched a film that enthralled me. I even watched it a second time just to see what I could only know by having seen it before without knowing then. Doesn't make sense? Well, let me explain:

During 170+ minutes, there are six different episodes with six different main characters (well, there are more characters than just those six) per time line in six different time lines ranging from 1849 to 2346 and the genres range from drama to fantasy to science fiction. And best of all: the main actors who play up to six different characters but usually more than two or three. That's not all. Several actors had roles that included different ethnic groups and opposite genders. Yes, indeed -- amazing. I watched it a second time to identify the actors whom I did not recognise the first time through and I was amazed  :-D

The cast is equally amazing: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Ben Wishaw and more. The producers and screenwriters are also big names: Andy Wachowski ("Matrix") and Lana Wachowski, David Mitchell who wrote the novel the film is based on. And Tom Tykwer, a German producer, composer and writer (Run Lola Run, Perfume). Surprising fact: It is a German film that premiered in Berlin.

It is CLOUD ATLAS (2012) -- one of the best films I've ever watched, this is going to be a cult/classic film :)  :-X

An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.

Everything is connected: an 1849 diary of an ocean voyage across the Pacific; letters from a composer to his friend; a thriller about a murder at a nuclear power plant; a farce about a publisher in a nursing home; a rebellious clone in futuristic Korea; and the tale of a tribe living in post-apocalyptic Hawaii, far in the future.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371111/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

[Fiach]

A friend of mine raved about the book, so I tried it and only got to about the third character (nuclear power plant bit) and gave up, I thought it was incredibly boring, my mate said it starts to pick up after that, but tbh, that was a third of the way through the book, if it takes that long to get good, I just cant be bothered with it.

On saying that, I will definately take Art's advice and check out the movie, it sounds great.  :-X

[Art Blade]

I think in this case, the film is probably easier to digest than the book.  :-D

[Jim di Griz]

I saw the short trailer for this some time agao and we'll definitely be watching it. Thanks for the reminder  :)

[Binnatics]

Yeah, das Boot 1981 (149 min) was cool.

But if, by any chance, you come across the director's cut 1997 (209 min), go get it. Wolfgang Petersen (director) supervised the new cutting himself and rearranged the entire film, obviously adding scenes that didn't make it into the cinemas due to the already quite long runtime. Petersen felt that those re-inserted scenes as well as the (chronological) rearrangement of various scenes resulted in a film he originally had intended. It's like watching a different film :)

After my holiday in Bayern (Southern Germany) and München (Munich) I decided to enjoy the small present I gave myself when we visited the Bavaria Film Studios. We got a tour there through, inter alia, the original filmset of Das Boot. That's a special way of experiencing the 'making off' of a movie ^-^
In the local souvenir shop I bought the 'uncut' version of Das Boot, called "Die TV-Erfolgsserie von Wolfgang Petersen". The film is burnt on 2 DVD's and consists of 282 mins of pure film material.
I don't know how this version relates to the above-mentioned, but I guess there are even more scenes left in than the director's cut. Before I've only seen the cinema version, and maybe not even with original (German) script, and since this one had no Dutch subtitles I decided to leave subtitles away completely and hope for my German to be enough to understand the basics of the story.
After a short while already I found out that my German is far too poor to really enjoy the intense dialogues that make this film so great and I decided that I'd miss too much on those, and the personalities of the characters of course, that I had to turn on English subtitles. Glad it had that language as a  subtitle choice; the rest of the languages were all Scandinavian and Slavic where I don't understand a word from, lol
This was enough to enjoy the film to the max, although I still regret that my German is so poor ::)
Almost 5 hours of playtime gives you a very good impression of what it is to be on a U-Boat in the Atlantic, awaiting orders, sitting out a 3 week storm or pray for the depth charges not to destroy your boat ???

What a great film!!! 5 hours seem long when you first start, but when the movie came to its end, it did not at all have become boring for a single moment.

Before I forget; Thank you Art for recommending München as a possible location and of course for pointing out the Bavaria Film Studios as a good spot to spend the day :-X :) +1 well earned!!

[fragger]

Glad you enjoyed that Binn. Das Boot is probably the best thing Wolfgang Petersen ever did, and the Director's Cut is far and away the best version of it :-X

I don't mind a long film if it holds my attention. Another longie I like is Gettysburg (four hours), but mainly because I've had a long-standing interested in the American Civil War and I appreciate the historical faithfulness of that movie. It's not a perfect film and is a tad uneven in that it seems to switch between being a big-screen epic and looking like something that was made for television (which it wasn't). Made before the CG era, it literally has a cast of thousands - no clever editing tricks but full armies of "extras" largely composed of just about every CW re-enactor in the country. The scale of the film is quite impressive at times, particularly towards the climax which is quite something. Terrific musical score too.

My main gripe with the movie was the casting of Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee, not because I don't like Sheen - I think he's a very capable actor - but because he was so, so wrong for the role. I felt that his Lee was totally unconvincing. Sheen didn't have the commanding bearing or the dignified austerity of Lee, and he gave him a high-pitched, almost girly, twangy Southern accent, which Lee didn't possess - that is quite well documented. Plus Sheen is way too short - Lee was six feet tall while Sheen is a relatively short man. Everyone else in the film is taller than him! I had to keep reminding myself of who he was supposed to be :-() Most of the rest of the main casting was excellent, especially Sam Elliott as Union Cavalry Commander John Buford and Jeff Daniels as Union Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, both perfect choices for their respective roles.

The attention to detail is fantastic, the film makers really did their homework for it. Stuff like correct unit insignia and their regimental flags, the locations of the various units on the field at the proper times, weapons and equipment, the military paraphernalia of the day, the look of the characters and their manner of addressing one another is all very authentic. If you're a Civil War buff there is a great deal of authenticity to be spotted, and there are many outdoor scenes where there is a lot of interesting activity going on in the background. Every time I see it I spot something I hadn't noticed before. Much of the film was shot on location at the real Gettysburg battleground (they had to be very careful with their camera angles to exclude the dozens of monuments at the site and to keep the modern urban sprawl from intruding on their scenes). At four hours' length it's definitely a viewing commitment, but despite it's relatively minor flaws it's a film I can happily revisit from time to time.

Oddly enough, the same production team who made Gettysburg later filmed Gods And Generals, another long Civil War film which just plain stank - essentially a dull, 3½ hour hammy stage play on film which had me microsleeping throughout its interminable length. Even Robert Duvall as Lee - the right choice this time - couldn't save that dog's breakfast of a movie. Never again, unless I'm in need of an effective insomnia treatment.