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

Three great movies over the weekend, which was a welcome change.

Amy - Really great. Winehouse was just so innately talented that it made it all the more sad to see how tragically misused and taken advantage of she was. It really went a long way to flesh out the over-the-top stereotype she became.

Love & Mercy - Kind of a depressing double-feature after Amy, but oh well. A biopic about Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame, told in two halves to illuminate his early and late career. Paul Dano was great, which I didn't even think was possible. Plus it has some of the greatest "musician at work" scenes ever.

Phoenix - There's a lot to think about in this one, so I'm still processing it a bit (a good thing). A holocaust survivor has facial reconstruction surgery that almost but not quite restores her previous appearance. She pretends to be a stranger and hooks up with her betrayer-husband and ends up impersonating herself so that he can collect her inheritance. Hauntingly beautiful and sorrowful.

I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark again last night... still my favourite thing that Lucas has ever been involved in. That film, while hockey in places, is pretty much perfect and accomplishes exactly what it intends to. I especially love that Indiana Jones never does anything. For all his heroics the outcome would have been identical without him there, that is awesome.

I'm going to watch the next two over this week as well. This was my favourite series as a kid.

I am totally going to go home and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark tonight.

Greg, I just bumped Amy out of my top 3 for the year after seeing Brooklyn and was sad to do it. GOOD LUCK trying to maintain a stereotype on her after seeing that amazing documentary. What a tragedy

You know, people say that all the time about IJ, but I just don't buy it. I agree that he generally fails at each of his objectives, but the outcomes most definitely would have been different without him.

1) If he hadn't burst back into the Ravenwood Bar, the Nazis would've had the headpiece of the Staff of Ra (and had the full inscription).
2) If he hadn't found the real location of the Ark, the Nazis would still be digging in the wrong place.
3) If he hadn't blown up the flying wing, the Ark would've been flown directly to Berlin instead of the submarine island.

I know the counter argument is that if you remove IJ: Nazis get headpiece, dig up Ark, open it, look inside, and all die-- just like it happened with him there, therefore he's irrelevant. I just don't think that sort of reverse logic works.

I don't watch a lot of movies and haven't in the past, and I've been trying to fix that somewhat. So for the past two years I've made a list of ten movies I have to watch in the upcoming year. It's been a fun activity, and I've increased the number of movies I've seen in addition to those on the list. (For a long time I just plain didn't like the act of sitting down and watching a movie, period.)

Yesterday I made the list for 2016. All things I haven't seen before, and a combination of suggestions from others, things I've been interested in, and things I feel I should see. After a lot of noir and such in the previous years I tried to go a little bit lighter this year.

The Great Dictator (1940)
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)
Breathless (1960)
Bedazzled (1967)
1776 (1972)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Valley Girl (1983)
Mansfield Park (1999)
Attack The Block (2011)

If IJ hadn't been there, the Ark would have still been in the hands of the Nazis, and not in the hands of the Top Men. Eventually, someone in Berlin would have figured out, "Don't look in that box."

Gregarius wrote: You know, people say that all the time about IJ, but I just don't buy it. I agree that he generally fails at each of his objectives, but the outcomes most definitely would have been different without him.

1) If he hadn't burst back into the Ravenwood Bar, the Nazis would've had the headpiece of the Staff of Ra (and had the full inscription).
2) If he hadn't found the real location of the Ark, the Nazis would still be digging in the wrong place.
3) If he hadn't blown up the flying wing, the Ark would've been flown directly to Berlin instead of the submarine island.

I know the counter argument is that if you remove IJ: Nazis get headpiece, dig up Ark, open it, look inside, and all die-- just like it happened with him there, therefore he's irrelevant. I just don't think that sort of reverse logic works.

I don't know about 'all the time' unless a small group of internet nerds counts as 'all the time' for you - most people I know aren't aware of it at all. But the theory is generally true... not exactly - obviously - or it would be silly to point it out. The film could easily be seen to end up roughly the same way it did without Indiana involved, that's definitely true and it's highly unusual for a film of that sort to have a full fledged hero who, for the most part, doesn't really do anything of note or have a huge impact on the outcome.

I don't see him as irrelevant because of this... so there is no 'therefore he's irrelevant' in my version of it. He's us, he's the viewer, he makes the film worth watching and gives the story what it needs. It's an unusual way to make an adventure film. Without him they certainly would have had the head piece and everything else falls into place after that.

Would they have figured out 'don't look in the box' ... I think that's unlikely, the reason the Nazi's wanted it in the first place makes it clear that looking in the box was a top priority (they were supposed to weaponize it). In fact I think the film hints that it may still be opened at some point in the future again based on where they put it. Safe for a long time, but not forever.

Saw The Revenant this weekend.

The good:
Cinematography - Beautiful. Perhaps the best I've scenery I've watch in long time. Pretty amazing how isolated it made you feel seeing the harsh cold of Canada in 1820s.
Acting - Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio were excellent even if DiCaprio grunted half the movie.
Great Scenes - Indian attack, Bear attack, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) key scenes, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) survival scenes.

But...
I found myself looking at my watch twice. A sign a movie is running a too long. I didn't really get the bond between Hugh Glass and anyone else including his son. I also didn't need to see another scene of DiCaprio eating raw meat or fish or falling off a cliff. I guess it was just too much brutality. Kind of reminded me of watching Unbroken last year. The endless suffering gets old after a while. So Revenant won't make my top five for 2015. It was good so maybe the sixth or seventh behind Fury Road, Force Awaken, Inside Out, Martian, Big Short, Ex-Mach and I still haven't watched Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn and a few other.

You gotta see Brooklyn, King