Recent theatrical viewings

[p1zl3]

GROWING OUT - a guy gets a job as a caretaker in an old house where a strange old lady lives upstairs, unseen.... Don't waste your time.

I agree, this movie was emo, wannabe intellectual, crap! It's not even good enough to be considered an "art film" or "experimental". 

[indianasmith]

I mistakenly posted this in the "Theatrical Viewings" thread . . . I actually caught it on DVD.

[Rev. Powell]

LITTLE ASHES:  Set in Madrid and Paris at the height of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, this movie describes a (likely fictional) student love affair between poet Federico Garcia Lorca and painter Salvador Dali. Director Luis Bunuel is a third wheel.  Surprisingly tame given the subject of forbidden love, and surprisingly conventional given the subject of revolutionary artists who advise us to eradicate all limits in art.  2.5/5.

[BoyScoutKevin]

"G-Force" It is the little and not so little things.

Good
It's having characters I cared about, even if the characters were . . .
4 guinea pigs
3 mice
1 star-nosted mole
1 hamster/ferret
1 housefly
1 cockroach

It's having the mole actually being a mole, which was a nice twist.

It's mentioning the San Diego Petting Zoo. I've been there.

It's knowing how to use music to enhance mood, including the song "Jump."

It's the action sequences, which I enjoyed.

It's "My god! What have I done?" Which always gets an emotional response from me, though usually the character saying it, has to die, to absolve him- or herself.

Bad
The characters are stereotypes, but the film somewhat gets around this by having the characters played by non-humans.

As in most films like this, the human actors take second place to the special effects.

Odd
How did they precisely know where the spacejunk was going to land? When a piece of spacejunk is set to land on earth, and not burn up in earth's atmosphere, the range given is in miles, not in acres.

Why was one rescued from being eat in the Pyrenees? Yes, guinea pigs are/were eaten, and yes there is a range of mountains called the Pyrenees, as it separates Spain from France. But, guinea pigs are not eaten there, but are/were eaten in the Andes, where the animals originated.

The hatred for this film. This is not the best film of the year, but by no means is it the worst film of the year. I guess this is a reminder to hold down my vitrolic on films I dislike, which are usually films that everyone else likes.

And I presume, from the ending, we'll get a sequel.

[Jim H]

I dunno about G-Force having any merit...  The trailer didn't have a single moment of soul, humor or any decent qualities at all.  It's hard to imagine such an abysmally awful collection of 2 minutes of footage being taken out of a movie that is anything but a train wreck.  Maybe I'll watch a bit of it when it's on cable.

Just saw GI Joe.  Another film with a bad trailer, but it's quite a bit better of a film than the trailer indicates.  Entertaining action scenes that have the likeness of a bunch of kids playing with toys.  Which is as it should be.  Some good performances, probably better than you'd expect considering the people cast.  Good villains.  What more can you ask?  Well, it's about 20 minutes too long.  Other than that though...

7/10.

[schmendrik]

Recently saw the new HARRY POTTER movie & THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE.

Harry Potter was good, I enjoyed it. I kind of bogged down reading the series (stopped early in #6) but I want to see the story through, so I'll finish the series one of these days and catch the movies when they come out (I hear that the finale will be 2 movies?). I'm especially enjoying the standard double-agent kind of question with Snape: whose side is he on? What's going on in his head? I have my theories, so I really am not interested in spoilers.

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is an excellent book that my wife really enjoyed. I've read bits of it but not all. Definitely a chick flick but enjoyable all the same. A different twist on time travel, a guy who is kind of helplessly bounced around to different significant events in his own past and future. Explores all the usual paradoxes. It will really mess your mind up trying to figure out the time line, like all good time travel stories. "Wait a minute, so when he appeared in that year, he was actually younger so he didn't know THAT would happen but his older self told him about THE OTHER THING so..."

Movie is very faithful to the book. I recommend both.

4.5/5 to both these movies, just because I think a 5 should be a life-changing event and I haven't seen one of those yet.

[Torgo]

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS  (2009)   **** out of ****.  A truly amazing film and Taratino's best since Pulp Fiction. I have no complaints here. Pretty much flawless filmmaking of the most entertaining order.

[indianasmith]

Our local reviewer gave that one very high marks . . . I kinda want to see it myself.

[Jim H]

Inglorious Bastards...  I have a somewhat different take.

To begin, I will say overall that I liked the film.  However, I felt it was overlong, I found the storyline with the French woman not particularly interesting, and the film simply dragged for me in several spots.  Like the scene in the bar.  I think that would have been a better scene with 5 minutes or so trimmed/written out of it.

It's funny, because I know watching any scene from this film by itself I would think it was really good (well, almost any).  But, somehow, the film simply wasn't the sum of its parts.  Great performances by everyone though - Christoph Latz probably deserves a Supporting Oscar nom, for example.  The music score, I believe partly by Morricone, is also excellent.  The film has some very funny sequences.  The scene where Brad Pitt's accent comes into play brought the house down.  But, not quite enough.

Overall, a 7/10 from me.

[Rev. Powell]

Saw the live Rifftrax version of PLAN 9 in the theater on Thursday.  Not bad at all, it included a short, a musical comedy act, and some very funny fake commercials along with the main feature.  The riffing on PLAN 9 was mostly stuff that was obvious to longtime fans (making fun of the cop who uses his loaded pistol to emphasize points he's making, pointing out the "modern women" line for those too slow to catch it), but it wasn't as obnoxious as I feared it might be, and the audience was REALLY into it.  I'd go to one of these if they had it again.  4/5, a fun time.

[RCMerchant]

The remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.
Ugh.
Theyv've taken a repulsive film and made it even more repulsive. NOT recommended!

[Cthulhu]

I've watched Drag me to hell with a few friends, and we had a great time! It was scary, and funny. I made the theather laugh once or twice.
So did another guy with a conveniently placed fart sound.

[Torgo]

HALLOWEEN 2 (2009)  **1/2 out of ****.  I was one of the few apparently that liked Rob Zombie's 2007 take on John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic. But you could tell where Rob Zombie was torn between doing his own thing (the first half) and remaking the original (the second half). Well the sequel is pretty much all Rob which turns out to be a good thing and a bad thing.  The kills and overall brutality is pretty rough here as instead of Michael Myers stabbing someone once he stabs them like 10 times.   If you hated Zombies first one though you'll hate this new one.

[The Burgomaster]

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS  (2009)   **** out of ****.  A truly amazing film and Taratino's best since Pulp Fiction. I have no complaints here. Pretty much flawless filmmaking of the most entertaining order.

I loved this movie, too, but I'd only give it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.  The dialogue was great and the suspense was riveting.  I thought the Basterds weren't in it quite enough though, so I shaved off 1/2 star.

[Nukie 2]

I just came back from seeing Inglourious Basterds, I felt that over all it was a great movie, but it was too damned violent-- like there's nothing that separates the heros from the enemy in the way of achieving ends.

Did anyone else spot the Antonio Margheretti refference (the name of the director of "Yor: Hunter from the Future")?