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Last seen...

The Silent House. Uruguayan horror movie shot in one single 90-minute take (or at least it looks like it) about a father and a daughter who are hired to renovate a haunted house... You'll see the ending coming, but it's nicely done and has a certain creepy charm. :star3:

Iron Sky. In 2018, the Nazis who fled to the moon in 1945 finally have their doomsday weapon ready and get set to invade Earth in their interplanetary zeppelins. As it happens, this coincides with President Not Sarah Palin's re-election campaign. Dumb as hell, obviously, and the central joke wears a little bit thin... but to quote the official trailer: "Motherfucking SPACE NAZIS." :star3:

Chronicle. Three high schoolers get superpowers. Things get worse from there. Yes, it's yet another found-footage film, but it's one with a few ideas of its own both on how to use that gimmick and what to do with the increasingly dull plot of teenagers getting superpowers and learning that with great power comes great box office returns. Clever, emotional, maybe not completely without its WTF moments but I liked it. :star4:
 
Anonymous

Anonymous :star4: This is a conspiracy movie about the longstanding controversy of whether William Shakespeare really wrote his plays or whether they were the work of a more educated (i.e., noble) person. I am not a Shakespeare scholar and I don't have a bone to pick in this issue. The movie is an entertaining exploration of one idea about where Shakespeare's plays may have come from if he didn't write them. This was a low-budget film with good-to-decent acting and a clever plot. I recommend renting but not buying it.

Leonardo Noto
leonardonoto.com | Physician, Paratrooper, Boxer/Grappler Turned Grumpy Old Writer! or follow me on Twitter @DrLeonardoNoto
 
Horror movie festivals, how I do love ye.

Monster Brawl, not so much. It's a fun (if not original) idea on paper, having all the classic movie monsters - zombies, vampires, wolfmen, bog creatures, Frankenstein, etc - face off in a battle to the death to see who remains standing. But while there are some good gags, it runs out of ideas pretty soon and just becomes repetitive. More for wrestling fans with an occasional interest in horror than for horror fans. :star2:

Thale, on the other hand, is really nice. Scandinavian horror has done good things to itself in the last few years (Let The Right One In, Rare Exports, Dead Snow, etc) and this is one that mines traditional folklore in much the same way that Troll Hunter does - though with far less slapstick humour and big action scenes, and more quiet drama and a slow build-up. Made on a shoestring budget, but most of the time you don't notice; the director avoids trying to do things he doesn't have the cast or the special effects to accomplish and just focuses on what he has: two men trapped in an old cabin deep in the woods with a young, seemingly helpless woman who may or may not be entirely human. :star4:

Grabbers is good ol' horror comedy in the Shaun Of The Dead/Attack The Block mold. The bad news is that a small Irish fishing community is attacked by tentacle monsters from outer space who kill everything in sight. The good news is that they're allergic to alcohol and won't eat you if you get really, really drunk. I said that it's an Irish film, right? Basically feels like a cheerful send-up of every Irish pub scene in advertising history, with monsters, and some pretty good comic timing. Fun. :star3:

Finally, Mutant Girls Squad is part of the new wave of Japanese gore comedy that left "sensible" so far back there must be generation ships involved. Basically X-Men meets The Machine Girl; Your typical Japanese schoolgirl whose always felt "different" from her class mates discovers on her 16th birthday that she's really a... whatever, mutant or demon or however you want to translate it into English, with metal claws for hands that can (and frequently does) literally cut people to strips. Which tosses her into a conflict between the government, who's trying to exterminate the brutes, and a mutant terrorist organisation trying to destroy society. As with most films in this genre, you just have to turn off your brain and stop going "Tell me I didn't just watch a girl with a chainsaw growing out of her ass fight a girl with tentacles for arms" at some point and just enjoy the ride. Also, as with most films in this genre, you feel kind of full in a not entirely pleasant way by the end. But hey, it's all in fun. :star3:
 
Two new films I saw yesterday:

Searching For Sugarman: a documentary on early-70s singer-songwriter Rodriguez, whose two albums flopped monumentally in the US, whereupon he disappeared without a trace, rumoured to have killed himself on stage... And never finding out that he'd somehow managed to become a huge star in South Africa, where he sold hundreds of thousands of albums. Supposedly. Follows a couple of South African fans as they try to find out what really happened, who got paid, why music matters in an oppressive society, etc. There are moments when the film feels manipulative - the former head of Motown Records is all too happy to play the villain - but overall one of the better music documentaries I've seen in quite some time, with some truly heartwarming moments. :star4: +

Rodriguez - Sugar Man - YouTube

Faust, AKA 4:3 Is The New Cinemascope. Apparently the last film in a tetralogy on power and corruption by Aleksander Sokurov, who I must confess I hadn't seen anything by before. His take on Faust is intriguing, if frustrating. He keeps it very down-to-earth - by which I mean "dirt", with Faust and Mephistopheles stumbling around a small German town trying to work out their issues of desire, want, need, soul, flesh. Visually, it's stunning; every frame is beautifully composed like an old Dutch painting, with light shining through layers of dirt, colours popping up in the midst of grey, and the 4:3 aspect used beautifully (much like in Meeks Cutoff last year) to shut the characters in and add to the claustrophobia; Faust keeps complaining that the world is too tight, and the camera shows it, squeezes him until he pops. Script-wise, I'm not entirely sure it holds up as well, though that may be because I expected a straighter adaptation of the myth than Sokurov is interested in. It's a nightmarish, nihilistic take on Goethe, and one I'm not entirely sure I want to agree with (supposedly, Putin personally pitched in money because he thought the film showed what true Russians are like, which is mildly scary), but it's definitely an impressive version. :star4:
 
Fat Man and Little Boy

:star5: Fat Man and Little Boy is a great movie with Paul Newman and John Cussack that is about The Manhattan Project that designed and built the first atomic bomb. The name of the film is based on the names of the first two bombs but is also a play on the conflict b/t Dr. Oppenhiemer and General Groves. The movie has a special place in my heart b/c my grandfather worked on The Manhattan Project.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it,
Leonardo Noto

leonardonoto.com | Physician, Paratrooper, Boxer/Grappler Turned Grumpy Old Writer! or follow me on Twitter @DrLeonardoNoto
 
Looper :star4:
Cool, well acted sci-fi flick about hitmen whose victims are sent back in time to them. And a whole bunch of other stuff. Very enjoyable.
 
^^ I'm curious about that one. Good cast, seems to be a plot that hasn't been done five million times already...

Got around to rewatching The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover for the first time in a very long time. I'd forgotten how deliciously (sorry) weird this movie is. I mean, I knew it was weird, but I didn't remember it being this openly surreal, like a huge baroque opera with a political agenda. With a lot of sex, and comparatively little cannibalism. Very fun, and I'll never get tired of Helen Mirren kicking ass. :star5:
 
Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas :star3: +

I give the film makers a lot of credit for even attempting to make this movie. Visually it is spectacular, and I found it to be well acted and, for the most part entertaining. It was too long and the connection of the stories does not translate as profoundly as it did in the book. Overall, pretty cool but probably wouldn't see it again. At least not for a long time.
 
As I write I am being subjected to "The Book of Eli" for the umpteenth time. There are certain films that my husband will insist on watching every time the come on cable. Eli and Mr. & Mrs. Smith are the worst offenders. Vengeance will be mine. Maybe there is a Ghost Hunters or Diners, Drive In's and Dive's marathon on this weekend. He hates those. Either that or smother him with a pillow while he sleeps.
 
mmyap said:
As I write I am being subjected to "The Book of Eli" for the umpteenth time. There are certain films that my husband will insist on watching every time the come on cable. Eli and Mr. & Mrs. Smith are the worst offenders. Vengeance will be mine. Maybe there is a Ghost Hunters or Diners, Drive In's and Dive's marathon on this weekend. He hates those. Either that or smother him with a pillow while he sleeps.
Click to expand...

Ah...pillow therapy, works great! Spousal Unit sleeps with one eye open now.:whistling:

Last movie...Snow White and the Huntsman...loved it, fun retelling of the story!
 
I haven't been to the theater in over a year. However, yesterday, while waiting for the Sunday night game, I revisited The Manchurian Candidate and also watched The Girl and A Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas.
I had forgotten how good a conspiracy theory story The Manchurian Candidate was. Very intriguing with a big election coming up this week.
I enjoyed The Girl, and now have to find Marnie, since I haven't seen that film since I was a kid. Alfred Hitchcock really was a creepy man.
Harold and Kumar... was just for a good laugh and it answered that need, though not nearly as well as the first two.
 
Jeremiah Johnson: I'd forgotten how much I loved that movie. It was nice seeing familiar (younger)faces among the cast members; I'd forgotten that a very young, pre-stardom Tanya Tucker had a bit part in this film. When Johnson went back to the Crazy Woman's cabin, and found another family living there, he opened the smokehouse door to see the wife and children huddled, terrified...she was one of the crowd of little blonde kids.
 
Life of Pi :star4:
Very, very nice adaptation of the book. For once an adaptation that actually compliments and adds to the total experience of the original work. I didn't see it in 3D and it was still just breathtaking to look at in some places. The tiger is super. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the book.
 
watched the Avengers again last night, and Tron, first and last movies.. really enjoyed Avengers..
 
A few recent movies:

Argo. In which Ben Affleck casts himself as the enlightened clever hero who uses film to save the world. Not quite as Great White Hunter-ish as you might fear from a movie about Americans outwitting people with dark mustaches and weird languages, though the tendencies are there, but it remains perfectly safe and unsurprising for far too long. Decent effort lifted by a brilliant Alan Arkin. :star3:+

Sound Of My Voice. Brit Marling follows up Another Earth with another low-budget, low-key psychological sci-fi drama that may or may not be a distant cousin of Looper but, regardless of how you choose to interpret it, becomes an excellent little study of how people choose to believe or not believe in something unbelievable. Keep your eyes peeled. :star4:

Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Really liked it, a few Hollywoodisms towards the end notwithstanding. An intimate, magical-realist little tale, the bastard child of Tideland and Treme, a story that blurs the line between family drama and full-on apocalypse, where parents try to turn their children into beasts to survive the new, harsher world on the limits of a society that raises walls against itself... Unless you're completely allergic to child actors, see it. :star5:

This Is Not A Film. Iranian film maker thrown into house arrest, with a prison sentence over his head and looking at a 20-year-ban on making movies or even discussing movies, documents his day with a digital camera, trying desperately to do something in a world that's shut him both out and in. Requires a bit of background info to really sink in, but the last shot ("You better wait here. Don't let them see the camera") is one of the most chilling things I've seen all year. :star4:

Holy Motors. I don't know exactly what Leos Carax is trying to do here, but I really like it. We follow a character as he transforms himself, inhabits various narratives, and the world changes to accomodate him. A comment on reality through a Hollywood lens (he's a bald man named Oscar), or just having fun with the concept of acting itself... Lavant is stunning in the lead role, and I want to see it again. I can't guarantee it won't seem too in love with its own cleverness on rewatch, but I want to see it again. :star5:
 
The last movie I watched was Revolutionary Road starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Winslet was an amazing actress but the film was just way too depressing to be enjoyable...
 
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