PolarisDiB
Asked 8 years ago
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What's the last thing you watched and what did you rate it?
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[archived]
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Should be a simple discussion exercise...
I saw Ringu. I didn't find it that interesting, but it was okay. I rated it 3 out of 5 stars. Since I haven't seen the remake, I now know that I don't really intend to.
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Answers
agha
Answered 3 years ago
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I don't care for animation, but I definitely second your first two movies.
Fucking Amal was much better than I expected.
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Ingolfsson
Answered 3 years ago
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Little Children: Very interesting ideas about having an affair, and how a cumminity treats a paedophile - 4 stars
Show me Love (Fucking amal): Beautiful movie about two young girls that fall in love and struggle of being different - 4 stars
Up (2009): Everyone know that one. The first half of the movie was outstanding and then it went downhill - 3 1/2 stars
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PolarisDiB
Answered 3 years ago
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What punched me in the gut was the fact that the entire movie rested on the question of whether the guy would help himself, or choose the weaker path, of which he did the latter, resulting literally immediately in the death of both him and his son--in typical hilarious comedic Coen brother way.
Tonight I saw a Japanese movie called Vampire Girl vs. [noLink]Frankenstein[/noLink] Girl. It was ridiculous in an expected way, otherwise completely unexpected. That is all.
--PolarisDiB
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steprous
Answered 3 years ago
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A Serious Man
Here's my answer to Steprous' question:
Yes and I did. It's not meaningless, it's just the Coens playing around with faith in their Coen-y way. The ending was a real punch in the gut, like No Country.
--PolarisDiB
I thought the ending fell flat I didn't know what to make of it, what part of it punched u in the gut? I really liked burn after reading, though I don't remember the ending exactly.
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PolarisDiB
Answered 3 years ago
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A Serious Man
Here's my IMDb review:
Many people draw a pattern out of the Coen bros. rather unpredictable pastiche of genre-bending, twisted films, claiming that they make a drama and then a comedy. That explanation is sort of limited being that everything they make is both disturbing AND hilarious, and this would be two "comedies" after one "drama", but indeed A Serious Man is much closer to a comedic counter-point to No Country for Old Men than Burn after Reading was. Thematically and structurally, No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man are quite similar. In both, a moment occurs in which the main protagonist states, aloud, the solution, but misses it himself because he's not thinking. In No Country for Old Men, it's when Tommy Lee Jones' character describes cattle getting killed. Here, it's when the professor tries to help his brother but doesn't listen to the advice himself. Either way, they both have very similar endings as a result.
Now, this movie is completely unpredictable in terms of where it's going, but like all Coen bros. movies, it makes perfect sense considering the characters and the situations. The parallels, however, to Job are heavy and by the ending the whole of the movie is very clear, resulting in possibly one of the most satisfying moments of reveal I've seen in cinema in a really long time. Plus, the idea of these two dark-humored and unique individuals taking on faith is just too much of a good thing to state simply in a review. In this case, seeing actually is believing, and one almost wonders why it took them so long to get around to doing it. But now that it's here, it fills a previously unrecognized gap in their ouevre.
That said, I wasn't a fan of the dream sequences. I'm not sure they really served a lot of help to the plotline except the usual "show the inner turmoil of the character" which is well enough shone by his acting and dialog--Oh GOD the dialog, this movie was another win in that regard! Fans of the Coens may note the sort of Big-Lebowski-in-junior-high aspect of the kids while the dry understatement and talking-over-each-other popularized in Fargo describes the adults. Nevertheless, the Coens have turned to an interesting form of pastiche that is certainly noteworthy, but does sort of make one miss the more dynamic movements of their previous works. Still, after No Country for Old Men they've certainly strove fearlessly off into new territory, and it's compulsively watchable and ALWAYS surprising territory. I don't know how they'll keep it up, but somehow even the moments that are so obviously what would happen in these situations still catch you completely off guard, to hilarious, and horrifying, effect.
Here's my answer to Steprous' question:
Yes and I did. It's not meaningless, it's just the Coens playing around with faith in their Coen-y way. The ending was a real punch in the gut, like No Country.
--PolarisDiB
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steprous
Answered 3 years ago
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I just saw A serious man and I really didn't get it, I liked the Coen Brothers last movie but a few of them i just don't get, this is one of them. It's deep but possibly meaningless. Anyone else see it and really love it?
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baa
Answered 3 years ago
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Brick
I love film-noir, so I was pretty apprehensive about this, as I was worried that it was going to be too cutesy. Like the Vice-Principal as the stand-in for the Chief of Police archetype. For the most part, though, it is not a high-school noir story, but more of a noir that happens to be set in a high school, ignoring the constraints imposed by the setting whenever needed. So it plays a lot of the riffs near perfectly, without coming across like that movie where you have pre-teens playing gangsters.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt does all right as the lead, in fact everybody does their part pretty well, except maybe Emile whatshername from Lost, who doesn't quite capture the doomed dream girl very well. My biggest fear about a movie like this is that the director ends up coming off as a precocious twit who may not have many other tricks up his sleeve when it comes time for his next film. I'll want to check out The Brothers Bloom to find out.
This was a movielens recommendation that I took a long time to check out.
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PolarisDiB
Answered 3 years ago
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Where the Wild Things Are
In 2007 I saw this strange movie that changed my perception of both how movies targeted to children could be made, and also the ability of an artist with a good vision to adapt literature to the screen without losing the message of the original. It was called Bridge to Terabithia, and I was amazed at the way it combined realistic child characters with real-life themes that concern them, in a language that they understand without being made too simplistic or talking down to them. Bridge to Terabithia set a standard, but unfortunately it was so misadvertised and ignored that nobody knew that a new standard had been set, that children's issues dealing with real child development are now something more than "Imagination is great!" and "Love will solve anything!" and take into account the knowledge that even children have that things aren't always okay and sometimes bad things happen; that death is a part of life and that we do not live in a world where what we want is what we'll get.
Spike Jonze may or may not have seen Bridge to Terabithia. However, whether he did or didn't, he still understood the message and made another film that deals with childhood as it's actually like, not childhood that is served with a cherry on top as most children's fantasy movies are. In Where the Wild Things Are, Max runs away to escape his frustration and anger at his home-life, but his home-life is no terrible situation all considering and a large part of it is simply Max trying to deal with how much attention and work his mother is able to give. He goes to an island of imagination where Wild Things are, and they make him their king, but unlike most 'parallel dimension hero journey' fantasies where the protagonist figures out the logic of the fantasy world and applies it to solve his problems in the real world, Max finds instead characters of roughly the same intelligence and maturity he has coping with the same problems he has as well, and no real answer to them are given. Indeed, just as Bridge to Terabithia reminded me strongly and painfully of what it was like to run through the forest turning tree-stumps into goblin kings, and then losing that experience with life experience in a way that I totally miss but do not want to return to, Where the Wild Things are reminded me of the thousands of times I'd sleep over at friends' houses, only to spend too much time with them the next day or something and end up getting into a huge fight over whatever and having to eventually be separated for a while. It's the dirt-clod fight you had where someone got hurt and you got angry at their hurt because you didn't mean it but now your fun is ruined. It's the time you threw rocks and eventually broke a window, only to spend an entire day fretting over the eventual punishment you were going to receive from the adults, only to punish yourself with your guilt to such a degree that by the time the adults discover it, they have nothing left to do but forgive you and give you cake so you feel better. No single sentence or moralization fixes everything, and childhood is filled as much with frustration and anger as it is with imagination and hope. This is the region of childhood where the wild things are.
That is not to say that this movie is perfect. Spike Jonze's actor direction, his realization of the Wild Things, and his clear-eyed view of childhood's high and low points (and how quickly they change) are spot on, but the soundtrack does get in the way, the hand-held cinematography adds nothing, and there are a couple scenes of sentimentality that really weigh the plot down. Dave Egger's dialog and characterization is brilliant and spot-on, but at times the script doesn't seem like it's actually going anywhere. The experience of this movie becomes so much more than the whole or even the sum of its parts: the moments when you're uncomfortable in your seat, wondering if anyone will get hurt and, if not, if their feelings will, are the moments this movie becomes real. The fantasy and the storytelling are almost beside the point of the affection. Little Max is not the little kid inside that you want to escape into and run around without a care in the world, who then enters a world of maturity and comes to terms with it, he's the little brat you were who got unfairly blamed for something in the school yard and sits crying in the corner of the home room, wishing everyone would understand that you're a kid and don't understand. He's intelligent, but not wise; he's romantic, but not okay. So if you're willing to visit that dark Id of your former self, then this movie will be looking into a mirror of the primal screaming man-child inside of you. If you're looking for a fun escapist entertainment, or worse, an indie paean with great music and nostalgic characters, you might not find yourself enjoying this movie quite as well as you expect. In fact, this movie is so much better for it, but unfortunately, something tells me it's not going to end up as liked as first imagined. It seems to me it's too real for most people's expectations, as nostalgia, escapism, and childlike hope are in short supply here. After all, someday the sun will go out, if some other tragedy or catastrophe doesn't wipe us out first.
--PolarisDiB
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dylan050681
Answered 3 years ago
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Solyaris:
Which was utterly disappointing. Pointless dialogue, irritating characters and oh-my-word the audio track was awful. I thought the film was Russian, so why is the Russian audio track dubbed? Completely distracting.
1 star
La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful):
Hilarious. The first comedy film I have literally laughed out loud to in years. And a sob-inducing ending that only Schindler's List and WALL-E had previously evoked. I bought it as a total accident. "A holocaust comedy? Are they sure? I have to watch that I bet it's car crash" How wrong I was. Brilliant comedy gold.
5 star
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