What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

Unicron wrote: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Aronofsky film that I wanted to see again, but as someone that watches about 400 movies every year, a film that's memorable is always preferable to the alternative.

Yeah, I'd say 49/50 movies are just forgettable. Even some that I considered decent. Some are so lackluster that I completely forgot I even viewed them and almost got re-queued! Films that you spend 4-5 days thinking about afterwards are so rare. These are the important ones because they affected you, somehow. Generally, for me, they tend to not be the more "fun" ones although there are certainly exceptions.

Catching up:

Network is the shit.
I've seen Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and The Fighter twice each; all of them because I wanted to see the lead performances (one of the leads in the case of Requiem) again. The most notable achievement of Aronofsky's films for me is that he succeeds in extracting the last ounce of talent from usually one actor on the set who puts the rest of the film in their respective orbit. That's what kinda fascinates me about them. But, yeah, I don't really go back for the films, as a whole.

I finally got around to seeing Triple 9 the other day. It was... OK. It was a stellar cast, but I wonder how many of them actually felt like what they were doing was worth their time or if they were just cashing paychecks? Winslet's role was monochromatic. Ejiofor's role was somewhere between linear and nonsensical. Affleck's role felt like it was tacked on to give him something to do, as it didn't develop in any direction. Paul was just rehashing Jesse from Breaking Bad. Harrelson was DEFINITELY just there cashing a paycheck, as he had scenes dropped in that basically were "Be what Woody Harrelson has been since Natural Born Killers, except for Friends with Benefits where you were the most stereotypical gay man ever imagined. OK? Thanks." It was an action movie, but even action movies occasionally follow the Intro/Conflict/Resolution pattern. This one just dissolved into a bloodbath that didn't offer any resolution other than "I should have stopped watching this half an hour ago" by the time the credits were rolling. My girlfriend fell asleep before the end. I woke her up when I turned the TV off and in response to her mildly frustrated look I said: "You almost literally did not miss anything."

Unicron wrote: Saturday, I saw the contentious Mother. Overall, it was a mixed bag, but I thought that the photography and acting was stellar. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but my wife and I didn’t think it was very ambiguous. It did go from being a subtle metaphor to a very heavy handed one. I always go back and forth on whether or not the film had much of a statement to make, but given the terrible reviews and discussions with others, I think it pushed a lot of buttons, so it makes it a bit hard to write it off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Aronofsky film that I wanted to see again, but as someone that watches about 400 movies every year, a film that's memorable is always preferable to the alternative.

re: Mother

Re: Gary Sax

jeb wrote: Watched E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL with my 13yo and 12yo this weekend. They agree it was good, but it didn't make them sob like it did me (at age 9) or tear up (at age 44). I think it's because they are dead inside and I am a delicate desert blossom deeply in touch with my emotions.

Jeb, you didn't make the trek all the way out to Pasadena, did you? I also took my son to see it last weekned; could we have been in the same theater??!?!

Lately, I have been binge-watching some pretty grim tv shows, including American Horror Story and True Detective. My girlfriend actually complained about it recently, asking me when was the last time that I watched something funny. So I looked and looked at the library, and didn't find any funny tv shows that looked worth trying. Same problem with the most of the movies, so I reluctantly picked up Slash. I knew from the title and a glance at the cover that this wasn't likely to be my kind of thing, and it wasn't. Even so, Slash was actually very good, and I would recommend it to some people.

Slash is billed as a nerdy teenage comedy, but really it is more of a sincere coming of age story featuring a bisexual girl and a sexually ambivalent boy. They bond over their mutual interest in writing fan-fic, and the movie sometimes includes scenes of the boy's slash stories brought to life. He seems gay and conflicted and closeted, but then this cool, vaguely goth-looking girl gets him hot and confused. None of this is interesting to me, but the acting is very good by a bunch of unknowns*, and though the laughs fall short, the awkwardness is endearing and totally credible. I reluctantly cared about these characters and their struggles to find themselves and each other. The dialogue is realistic and the convention scenes were authentic except for the shortage of extras.

*(Actually, I did recognize one person in the movie: Brandy Burre, who played Theresa D'Agonstino, a political consultant who appeared in a couple of seasons of The Wire. It wasn't a big part, but she was pretty memorable.)

dragonstout wrote:

jeb wrote: Watched E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL with my 13yo and 12yo this weekend. They agree it was good, but it didn't make them sob like it did me (at age 9) or tear up (at age 44). I think it's because they are dead inside and I am a delicate desert blossom deeply in touch with my emotions.

Jeb, you didn't make the trek all the way out to Pasadena, did you? I also took my son to see it last weekned; could we have been in the same theater??!?!

Nah, we just watched on the couch--it's on Netflix.

We did RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK last night (it's on Amazon Prime). That movie is still good. Indy is a perv, though, some kind of child predator I guess. Not sure how much older he is than Marion, but it gives that Nepalese bar scene a gross vibe as he says "you knew what you were doing." Yuck.

@Shellhead, try FLEABAG on Amazon. It's well-written and extremely well performed. It's about a 20-something Lonfon fuckup trying to not be such a fuckup, but she's a fuckup nonetheless, and fucks it up a lot.

All of this search for deeper meaning in cinema has made me want to expand my horizons, so I watched Kong: Skull Island. I got a laugh out of it, because no way in hell can you take it seriously.

I saw that movie on a plane and was surprised how much I liked it. I will watch the next one if they make it.

I just saw The 100 Foot Journey and loved it.

jeb wrote: We did RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK last night (it's on Amazon Prime). That movie is still good. Indy is a perv, though, some kind of child predator I guess. Not sure how much older he is than Marion, but it gives that Nepalese bar scene a gross vibe as he says "you knew what you were doing." Yuck.

That has become an awkward scene, that makes me think more about Hollywood in the 80ies than about Nepal in the 1930ies. Yuck indeed.
Still, probably my favorite action-adventure flick.

I have been listening a lot to a podcast called 'Unjustly maligned' about people who love something from pop culture that most people hate, and it caused me to rewatch Masters of the Universe. I thought it was worth a 2nd look as I remember not liking it mainly because it was very different from the cartoon, and well it isn't as bad as I remember. It is basically the same quality as a bunch of other weak 80s sci-fi/fantasy like Spacehunter or Beastmaster. It is something that if you watched 10+ times you would love, and it is fine for an occasional watch.

Still searching for my lost sense of humor, so I watched Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. Alan Tudyk was funny on Firefly, but he is dealing with a weaker script here. I liked the concept of this movie, but the jokes just didn't land well and the deaths were too ludicrous to be either funny or scary. And that's the overall problem with the movie: it's a horror/comedy that is neither scary nor funny. It wasn't bad, so it was an adequate way to pass some time,

Early buzz for Blade Runner 2049 is great. I'm super hyped.