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

Mockingjay part 2 was okay. Certainly better than part 1, but Catching Fire is still the best of the series. Doubt I'll watch any of them again though.

10 Cloverfield Lane is fantastic. One of my favorite thrillers ever. So many great moments throughout, and really keeps you guessing in different ways. Wonderful performances (maybe John Goodman's best), and a really nice attention to details by the director, without being too obvious. As Josh stated earlier, the less said, the better. Just go.

It's weird to see Barnes shit talk Pixar the year after Inside Out.

Can't wait to see Zootopia but now Grud has thrown a wrench in my plans, tempting me with 10 Cloverfield Lane

The week after I see a movie is the movie's true test. I'll either completely unravel it and find that I disliked it more than I thought (the case with every Zack Snyder movie), settle on the feelings I walked out of the theater with, or forget it entirely (as with the Iron Man movies). Rarely do I find more love for a film the more I think about it, but that is happening with 10 Cloverfield Lane. Grun's feelings mirror my own, easily one of my favorite thrillers ever and easily John Goodman's best performance to date. There are pieces of dialogue that I keep going back to and the more I think about them, the more I realize how telling they are and I am downright haunted by those things. Stupid people will clearly miss them and will miss the entire point of parts of the movie, but I 'm finding those things reinforce what you're meant to take away from the film.

I almost saw it again but decided not to. I needed to sleep that night and I knew revisiting it would keep me awake. You all know how much horror I watch, and with the exception of shit I just won't watch like anything where realize animals are killed on film, I'm not easily rattled. Dialogue...DIALOGUE from this movie has worked its way under my skin and is bothering me.

For Grun's eyes only:

Yes, I loved that part, and of course the part right afterwards. That section was maybe a little bit contrived, but still, powerful. This may seem dumb, but I knew I would love this movie from the first scene where they quickly show her open a drawer in her apartment with a screwdriver in the hole where the knob is missing. Just an odd little detail, but somehow it invited me to pay close attention to things and told me that there would be great care taken to paint this whole picture and story.

I liked the ending a lot in the moment, but there's another way it could have gone and my only hesitation about the movie is whether I might have preferred that other way.

Last night I watched The Big Short, which is about the housing bubble of 2007. Great performances, and Christian Bale really nails it. It's a good movie if you are into serious drama.

After that I watched Maggie, which is the zombie film that Arnold did last year. It's definitely not your typical zombie film. There is no ragtag group of survivors fighting off the horde. You barely see any zombies in the movie. It's about watching a loved one succumb to the virus, really. It's decent but slow. Definitely not your standard Schwarzenegger film.

Black Barney wrote: It's weird to see Barnes shit talk Pixar the year after Inside Out.

I recall Barnes didn't like Inside Out very much. I love it, but it definitely is Pixar's only truly great film of their last five (Toy Story 3 being the last great one). He's right that Disney Animation's recent run with Zootopia, Wreck It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, etc., has been much more successful, both artistically and commercially. I don't predict that Moana will be a hit like those others, but then again, it might be another one that's great and surprising.

Speaking of animation companies crushing it, my girls and I love the films by the stop-motion company, Laika (Coraline, Paranorman, Box Trolls), and their new one looks amazing and also a little different in style for them...

Haven't seen Zootopia yet, but I really want to take the boy to it. We were going to try and go to the drive-in (I've never been!) on Saturday because the weather was kind of nice but the baby was sick. Then heard about how amazing the animation is and to see it in the theater instead.

The Pixar/Disney dichotomy is interesting. Wired wrote a piece on the effect after Big Hero 6 came out: www.wired.com/2014/10/big-hero-6/

Pixar has definitely struggled since Up, I liked Toy Story 3 fine when I saw it in theaters, and I've caught bits and pieces of it since and it hasn't done much for me. I actually really like Monsters University, possibly more so than Monsters, Inc. Inc certainly has more heart, but University is really funny, the animation is fantastic and the fraternity brothers are more interesting characters for me than Mike and Sully. I like Inside Out a lot as well, but I wouldn't classify it as one of the Pixar greats.

Josh Look wrote:

Black Barney wrote: If I thought Cloverfield was really overrated, will I like this?

Yes, and I think this is the only question I am willing to answer. If you didn't like Cloverfield, this is a very different movie, surpringly well made and well acted.

What if I never saw Cloverfield and have no desire to? I thought this movie looked really interesting until I saw it had Cloverfield in the title.

Disgustipater wrote:

Josh Look wrote:

Black Barney wrote: If I thought Cloverfield was really overrated, will I like this?

Yes, and I think this is the only question I am willing to answer. If you didn't like Cloverfield, this is a very different movie, surpringly well made and well acted.

What if I never saw Cloverfield and have no desire to? I thought this movie looked really interesting until I saw it had Cloverfield in the title.

It is completely its own thing. Totally different style of movie. Not found footage/shaky cam at all. A psychological thriller of very high quality.

I watched Risen last night. Very interesting movie. It's about a Roman tribune Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) in the time of Jesus' crucifixion. It starts off with him and his soldiers attacking Barrabus and his men and Clavius killing Barrabus. Then he oversees Jesus' crucifixion and it's just brutal as they take the bodies down off their crosses and throw them into a pit of corpses. Clavius then has to find the body and there's a lot of interrogation as he tries to find the disciples, who everyone is sure took the body. Then when you think it might get cheesy, Clavius finds the disciples and Jesus alive with them, it doesn't. Clavius is just shocked and can't say a word. He ends up following the disciples (at a distance) to try to reconcile the things he has seen.

It really shocked me how real it depicted everything.

I watched Crimson Peak last night, and as a big-time fan of gothic horror...I'd say it's probably the best of its kind in quite some time. But there's a strange sort of dichotomy going on in it. On one hand, it is really more in tune with gothic literature...things like Daphne Du Maurier, Henry James, or Horace Walpole. A touch of Poe in there, sure (specifically The Fall of the House of Usher). But there's also this more grand guignol, ultra-baroque tone that upends the more understated and stately parts of it. So it comes across like Turn of the Screw crossed with The Legend of Hell House. Not that those things are incompatible, but you usually don't see the more literary, stuffy material going with the balls-out ghosts and gore. It's really not much of a horror film, it's more of a gothic romance. I believe that's how Del Toro pitched it, even though the ads made it look like typical Halloween fare.

There's a lot of wonderful, very traditional elements, Del Toro definitely knows his stuff. Questionable, mysterious nobles in shabby clothes up to no good. Tawdry secrets. Familial strife. Poisonings. Stabbings. Decay and deviancy. A character wasting away. Crumbling houses. And of course the ghosts, which are just freaking awesome. This man has the best ghosts in his films, even if he's somewhat repeating The Devil's Backbone here in their visuals.

Production design is sumptuous to say the least, that this film wasn't at least nominated for art direction and costumes is fucking ridiculous. The imagery of the ruined house seeping red clay, snow billowing in from holes in the roof...this is wonderful stuff for the morbidly inclined.

Players are great all around, it would have been interesting to see Cumberbatch in Hiddleston's role but he backed out of the production. Hiddleston is starting to go places I think, between Only Lovers Left Alive, this picture and the upcoming Hank Williams bio he's moving on from the Marvel stuff nicely.

Probably not a general audiences recommendation though, regardless. It's much too slow and when the melodrama heats up, it threatens to send it off the rails at any moment. But if you like this kind of thing, it's a must see. I'd say it's probably his best all-around film, it's the one I like with the least reservations.

I tried to tell people about Crimson Peak while it was still in theaters, but most people don't have a clear notion of gothic horror/romance. And for that matter, del Toro lands a bit far on either side of that line, making for a relatively small sweet spot in terms of potential audience. I enjoyed it, but I can't particularly defend it against detractors.

Ya, that kind of story and subject matter is just not popular these days. It's such a specific genre that is not in fashion or in step with modern concepts at all. It's all about dread, decline, and melodrama more than the usual modern horror themes. In some ways, it really reminds me of the Roger Corman Poe films, especially Tomb of Ligeia and House of Usher. But those references mean pretty much zilch to anyone under 40 outside of horror fans, and even then you are looking at a tiny niche of folks.

Saw Oldboy and Sonatine again. Fucking bad ass. Guess I was pining for Asian mob shit