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

Just watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Green Destiny on Netflix. I loved the original film, and this is about as proper a sequel as you could ask for. Very classy, very beautiful. Fans of the first film should not hesitate. Newcomers, watch the first film... first.

The other movie that freaked me out as a kid was that made for TV Alice Through the Looking Glass movie, with Jabbywooky terrifying me and everything. Worst of all, you have Carol Channing as the White Queen signing jam tomorrow jam yesterday and turning into a freaking goat. Mom, can I sleep with you and daddy tonight ??

Just watched The Martian and really like its positive attitude and how down to earth and believable the catastrophes and responses were. Another thing I noticed, because it seems so unusual for a movie, was the way the cooperation with China was depicted without much fanfare and that the Chinese were the initiators. Of course there was the usual message of benevolence must overcome politics, but it was presented as a single line in a short scene. Somehow I find that to be quite remarkable.

Saw Gods of Egypt. My 3 word review is "stylish but dumb." If you want 3 more words, "Anubis is cool."

Hail, Caesar!. Fun, light, inessential Coen movie. It feels to me the way Life Aquatic feels as a Wes Anderson movie, that it needed another script pass. The elements don't really hold together well, and there's an inordinate amount of weight placed on elements that aren't really what the movie is "about", and too little emphasis on what it is. Or maybe I'm just wrong about the main focus.

Someone in my twitter feed suggested that this could have been a great TV series, as each week Eddie has to deal with another problem. That would have been great.

hotseatgames wrote: Just watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Green Destiny on Netflix. I loved the original film, and this is about as proper a sequel as you could ask for. Very classy, very beautiful. Fans of the first film should not hesitate. Newcomers, watch the first film... first.

It had some very striking images, and a couple of great action scenes (namely, the one on the frozen lake), but I thought it tried too hard to replicate the relationships of the original. You had the "unrequited love" between the two older characters, and then you had the 'forbidden" romance of the two younger characters. And all four characters fell into exactly the same basic character tropes! They tried to make the story more epic, with an evil warlord and a bunch of Jedi Knights Followers of the Iron Way, but most of that fell flat for me. I also wish they'd stuck with Mandarin language dialogue, and English sub-titles. Seeing these character speak English was jarring.

Not sure how you have your settings, but when I watched it, it was all sub-titled.

Shellhead wrote: Back when it first came out, Time Bandits failed to capture my interest, so I skipped it and have never seen it until now. Either it's an overwhelming confirmation bias or I have keen instincts about trailers, but I am rarely wrong when I avoid something for this long. Sorry if I am taking a big steaming piss on somebody's nostalgia, but Time Bandits is a poor movie. The flimsy plot is little more than an excuse for a series of frantic randomfests of activity by the principal actors, who do little more than shout out lines at assigned intervals. Maybe it got really good in the final 30 minutes, after I dozed off, but when a movie has run on that long without capturing my slightest interest, I doubt it.

I don't hate Terry Gilliam. I liked his work with Monty Python, I really enjoyed Brazil, and I loved 12 Monkeys. But Time Bandits was only his second movie, and his first after Monty Python, so perhaps he merely struggled with overall process. Whatever the reason, Time Bandits wasn't funny, and it wasn't much of anything else either. Frankly, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure covered similar territory with considerably more wit and talent.

I still had a couple of days before it was due back at the library, so I put Time Bandits on again and re-watched the part that I slept through. I did find some enjoyment in watching the big battle with the bad guy, though the ending with the parents still sucked. That ending felt like Gilliam just thinking dismissively that he was tired of movies with happy endings, so he just arbitrarily selected a mean ending to the movie.

Since this was the Criterion Collection edition, there was a whole disc of extras. I skipped the commentary track on the main disc, but I did give the extras a shot.

First, there was a feature on the costume and set design work, and it made me realize that those aspects of the movie were fairly good, especially given the relatively low budget of the movie.

Another feature was about 90 minutes long, with Terry Gilliam at some kind of Q&A session at an event in Finland in 1998. There weren't many questions, but Gilliam gave long answers that often featured interesting anecdotes. It ran that long because it covered his whole career, as well enough information about his childhood to help understand how this guy ended up as the American in Monty Python. I really enjoyed this feature. Gilliam is a self-aware guy with a knack for story-telling.

There was also a short interview of Shelly Duvall, by Tom Snyder. The questions weren't particularly good, but Duvall did a decent job of conveying the experience of working on this movie.

Reconsidering my previous comments, I still think that Time Bandits was not a good movie. I think that Gilliam had a lot of interesting ideas, but by making a kid and several dwarves the focus of the movie, he was practically doomed to get lousy performances. I have nothing against either kids or dwarves, but both present potential challenges, and Gilliam was not experienced or skilled enough at that time overcome the challenges. A child actor can be very, very good, but it probably takes superior communication by a director to get a strong performance. And there just aren't a lot of actor/dwarves to start with, so the odds of getting one who can also act well is probably unlikely. Aside from Peter Dinklage and that guy from Willow, I can't even think of any good actors who are also dwarves. So Time Bandits had an ambitious story with neat costumes and sets, but faltered due to weak performances.

Shellhead wrote: Aside from Peter Dinklage and that guy from Willow, I can't even think of any good actors who are also dwarves.

And you can enjoy them together in Prince Caspian!

Watched Trumbo a few days ago. I really liked it. Very witty, and I tend to like those kind of behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories. One thing I found weird, though, was Brian Cranston’s accent. The thing is, it was fine, but it was practically his own voice, anyway. So it ended up sounding like him just exaggerating everything he was saying. I think he should have just stuck with his own voice. But otherwise, it was quite good.