What Movies are you Watching?

[Htom Sirveaux]

Rented Zodiac last night. Not David Fincher's best work, but still pretty good.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Candyman and Ginger Snaps.

[ich1990]

King Kong (2005)

This was a crazy long movie. It had some incredible visuals but they were secondhand to the length and sheer slowness of the movie. I admit that I watched large portions of it on 2x speed. It also had a few unbelievably (literally) dramatic scenes that ruined the flow and made me laugh (like Ann walking through the mist and streetlight in NY to try to calm King Kong down).

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched The Iron Giant.

[ShiroiHikari]

The other night I watched Paprika and MirrorMask. Paprika was both fun and unsettling. MirrorMask had a lot of potential but left something to be desired. Nice visuals though.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Diary of the Dead and Cloverfield.

[GhostontheNet]

Earlier I watched Sleepless in Seattle, and tonight I watched The Seventh Seal and The Passion of Joan of Arc.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Session 9 and Rosemary's Baby.

[sstohru]

Watched The Blues Brothers like 3 times last week lol.

"We're on a mission from God." Love that movie!

[RobinSena]

Last night I watched Kill Bill vol. 1. It was quite enjoyable, but I definitely look forward to seeing the Japanese movies that inspired it. =)

[Riggidig]

I went and watched UP in the cinema today. I laughed, I cried (twice). Seriously, can Pixar do anything wrong?

Also I'm watching John Carpenter's The Thing on DVD tonight.

[ich1990]

Firewall

I was truly surprised at the RottenTomatoes rating for this movie (19%). The movie was by the book, yes, but I thought it a very solid Techno-Thriller. I guess the Techno parts were a bit unbelievable, but since when has Hollywood cared about properly representing technology?


The Dark Knight

I have seen this twice before (in the cinema), but I had forgotten how purely awesome this movie is. I picked up on all kinds of little nuances that I missed the first two times through the movie.

[shade of dae]

Recently my family has been watching nothing but chick flick/ family movies. So, thus far I've seen Kung-Fu Panda, which was amusing but not hilarious, Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was a good fluff movie, although the moving mannequins were very creepy, Twilight, which I saw with some friends who loved it, so for their sake I had to refrain from laughing (too much), and Enchanted, which was good, but not neccessarily great.

I am going through severe action-movie withdrawal right now.

[GhostontheNet]

Recently my family has been watching nothing but chick flick/ family movies. So, thus far I've seen Kung-Fu Panda, which was amusing but not hilarious, Confessions of a Shopaholic, which was a good fluff movie, although the moving mannequins were very creepy, Twilight, which I saw with some friends who loved it, so for their sake I had to refrain from laughing (too much), and Enchanted, which was good, but not neccessarily great.

I am going through severe action-movie withdrawal right now.

Do I take it the chick flick/family movie marathon and the severe action-movie withdrawal are related? Far be it from me to presume I can suggest better action movies than your brother (I'm the one to go to for horror movie suggestions). However, should you find yourself in a position to see more chick flicks, see if you can leverage your way to watching some of Nora Ephron's work (i.e. Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie & Julia). She directs some very stylish films which, unlike many of her peers, avoid overloading on cuteness, fluffiness, frivolity, and a general tendency toward manufactured sentimentality. Consequently, the deep emotions that are in her films feel much more authentic, rich, and rewarding.

[GhostontheNet]

Today I watched 28 Days Later and Castle in the Sky with my friend Amy.

[shade of dae]

Do I take it the chick flick/family movie marathon and the severe action-movie withdrawal are related? Far be it from me to presume I can suggest better action movies than your brother (I'm the one to go to for horror movie suggestions). However, should you find yourself in a position to see more chick flicks, see if you can leverage your way to watching some of Nora Ephron's work (i.e. Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie & Julia). She directs some very stylish films which, unlike many of her peers, avoid overloading on cuteness, fluffiness, frivolity, and a general tendency toward manufactured sentimentality. Consequently, the deep emotions that are in her films feel much more authentic, rich, and rewarding.

Yeah, with all the chick flicks my family has been watching, after a while, I just really want to watch something blow up. You're right though, Nora Ephron's movies are very good, as far as I've seen. Sleepless in Seattle was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, as well as You've Got Mail and I don't know how many times I've seen them. However, I've borrowed Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life from a friend and I need to watch it soon so I can return it to her. I'm hoping it's more intelligent than the last one, or if it isn't, at least be as hilariously over-the-top.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Dawn of Dead.

Yeah, with all the chick flicks my family has been watching, after a while, I just really want to watch something blow up. You're right though, Nora Ephron's movies are very good, as far as I've seen. Sleepless in Seattle was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, as well as You've Got Mail and I don't know how many times I've seen them. However, I've borrowed Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life from a friend and I need to watch it soon so I can return it to her. I'm hoping it's more intelligent than the last one, or if it isn't, at least be as hilariously over-the-top.

Yeah, I know! Why can't there be more explosions in chick flicks? All you'd have to do is equip the ladies with hand grenades, and ticket and DVD sales would go sky high. It would be simple enough to work into the script. "Sorry Jason, we can't be friends anymore, you hurt my feelings when you told me I should get more exercise. Now kneel down and beg for mercy, or eat shrapnel." "But I thought you liked Richard Simmons!" Male members of the audience wouldn't know whether to be delighted or terrified, and hand grenades would become the hottest new accessory. Nora Ephron is savvy about this stuff. She has Tom Hanks and his friend cry over a hand grenade in a war picture after accusing women of being too teary-eyed and sentimental with romance films. But in the meantime, I suppose we will have to content ourselves with explosions in action films of greater or lesser intelligence.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched Shadowlands.

[ShiroiHikari]

Last night I watched Session 9, a psychological thriller. I was pretty impressed.

[GhostontheNet]

Last night I watched Session 9, a psychological thriller. I was pretty impressed.

It is pretty good, isn't it? I'm glad to have Session 9 in my collection.

[ich1990]

Jumper

Great potential was mostly squandered on supposed character development but also the occasional fight with 'oh cool' moments. Want to read the book now and forget large portions of pathetic attempt at romance in movie was sad because refused any thought of deeper then basic hedonism.

[GhostontheNet]

Tonight I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[ich1990]

Flywheel

For what it is --a Christian film made on a shoestring budget by volunteers from a Baptist church-- it wasn't too bad. A little more subtlety when dealing with the moral of the story would probably have been warranted, but all things considered it was better than expected.

Taken

I had heard this was a good action movie, so I was prepared for the awesome and pared down fight scenes (very little Hollywood flair). What I didn't expect was the emotional impact. This is more than a popcorn flick, by far. Thanks to the ever awesome Liam Neeson's acting, this film was believable and emotionally gripping. That realism, combined with the disturbing subject matter (sex trafficking) made for a riveting movie that is impossible to take lightly. Highly recommended to older audiences.

Tonight I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I am curious, what did you think of this movie? Personally, this movies popularity seems to me to be like a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". Everybody says this is one of the best movies of all time, etc., etc. I seem to be one of the few people who thoroughly disliked it. Maybe in the '60s this was cutting edge cinematography, but those monkey suits didn't age well.

[GhostontheNet]

I am curious, what did you think of this movie? Personally, this movies popularity seems to me to be like a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes". Everybody says this is one of the best movies of all time, etc., etc. I seem to be one of the few people who thoroughly disliked it. Maybe in the '60s this was cutting edge cinematography, but those monkey suits didn't age well.

Well, suffice to say, a lot of stuff went down in 1968, and a lot of narrative-shifting Rubicon films came out that year. In the horror genre, for example, 1968 saw Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead, two films that revolutionized the genre by removing temporal and geographical distance from contemporary settings to make them the site of horror, blurring the boundaries between monster and family until the two became more or less indistinguishable, and assigning an adversarial or incompetent role to patriarchal authority figures formerly regarded as potent to stop the monster and restore the status quo. Needless to say, that opened up many new possibilities for social critique in the horror genre, as quite a number of critics since Robin Wood have agreed. In regard to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think the film does an excellent job of capturing the anticipation and anxiety of the period. It is indeed one of the most terrifying and exciting movies I have ever seen. The famous Stargate sequence is often noted to have had a deep resonance with the counterculture, who were experimenting with drugs to challenge mainstream Western values and ideologies. But where many Christians have taken the Reaganite view that counterculture is dangerous, and its influence is to be stifled, I think Francis Schaeffer was wiser than his monstrous progeny when he said that the counterculture was asking the right questions, but not finding the right answers. (For more information about Francis Schaeffer and counterculture, read this article from Ship of Fools.)

At first glance, 2001: A Space Odyssey may seem threatening to Christians insofar as it uses evolutionary themes to pose the question as to whether life has meaning. Perhaps like the Planet of the Apes series, it may employ such themes to deny teleology in favor of nihilism. However, a closer reading of the film reveals it to be steeped in Christian imagery that is employed in a way that is helpful to persons of faith. One of the central images of the film is the ancient technological monolith, which is tall, thin, black, book-like, and serves as the medium of transmission of an advanced civilization. This we may take as Holy Scripture, which serves as the medium of revelation of God, who rules wisely over heaven, and seeks to reign "on earth as in heaven" in similar Wisdom. At the climax of the film, the book is opened (so to speak), and the pure light of the Word (Logos) is startlingly revealed. Finally, at the very end of the film, an infant Christ figure is born and comes to earth, the Word made flesh who dwells among us to change the course of history.

So what on earth does that have to do with drugs and counterculture in the 60's? I think one of the major reasons illicit drugs and sexuality has been such a juggernaut is because of the cultural legacy of Protestantism in regard to its denigration of Christian mysticism. For a generation hungry for mystic spirituality, but denied it in the mainstream churches, the options were basically either to look for sex and drugs close to home to open the doors of perception, or to look East where mystic spirituality is more culturally encouraged. I think that for one of the first lost generations, the generation in which Blind Faith sang "Can't Find My Way Home" in reference to "Hansel and Gretel", what they were really seeking was mystic union with God. You can see this in films like Easy Rider, in which an agnostic pilgrim funded by a lucrative cocaine deal discovers faith in a surprising assortment of holy sites that would not ordinarily be thought of as such. Perhaps it is inevitable that through the dark forest we wander into the gingerbread house before we find our way home. In this respect, 2001: A Space Odyssey provided, and continues to provide, an important signpost along the way.

So yeah, it isn't a perfect film by any means. The ape costumes are pretty silly. On the other hand, the political satire inherent in these scenes of early humans going apesh*t and inventing the implements of war and domination are quite delicious in light of the contemporaneous Vietnam war (a war rooted in post-colonial conflict). Assuming we missed the point, the relatively small distance in the jump cut from the bone to the spaceship cues us in that we have not nearly made so much "progress" as the stark modernist decor of the misse-en-scene would lead us to believe. As far as personal gripes with the film, I basically have two. My first gripe is the way the film relegates women to the most trite and inane roles in the frontier of space exploration, reinforcing the patriarchal attitude that they are not capable of handling such important responsibilities. This film would have had remarkable power to challenge this tendency of earlier science fiction films, but instead, it reinforced it. My second gripe is my incedulity towards the naive overconfidence of the protagonists in HAL's infallibility. This is to a certain extent encouraged in the film narrative, but as a computer user in 2009 frequently facing crashes and the blue screen of death, I find this to be one of the film's most unbelievable elements.

[ich1990]

In regard to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think the film does an excellent job of capturing the anticipation and anxiety of the period. It is indeed one of the most terrifying and exciting movies I have ever seen. The famous Stargate sequence is often noted to have had a deep resonance with the counterculture

Ah, this is interesting. I couldn't watch the stargate sequence without laughing at its absurdity. Then again, I haven't ever done drugs or associated strongly with counter-culture movements. I guess I could see how people could become attached to this movie as adults if they have associated it with the better portions of their childhood (those times when they felt like they were doing something meaningful).

At first glance, 2001: A Space Odyssey may seem threatening to Christians insofar as it uses evolutionary themes to pose the question as to whether life has meaning... One of the central images of the film is the ancient technological monolith, which is tall, thin, black, book-like, and serves as the medium of transmission of an advanced civilization. This we may take as Holy Scripture...

My dislike for the movie stems from its absurdity and lack of style more than any percieved anti-Christian values. That being said, wasn't it the Monolith that taught the cavemen how to kill and dominate each other? If the Monolith is supposed to represent communication with God, then it seems that this movie isn't pro-Christian at all.

[GhostontheNet]

My dislike for the movie stems from its absurdity and lack of style more than any percieved anti-Christian values. That being said, wasn't it the Monolith that taught the cavemen how to kill and dominate each other? If the Monolith is supposed to represent communication with God, then it seems that this movie isn't pro-Christian at all.

No, the sequence goes cave-dwellers, screaming match with rival band of cave-dwellers, contemplative caveman discovers you can use bones to crack bones, cave-dwellers' hunting becomes more secure, cave-dwellers use bones as implement for preserving established order by beating challenger to death, cave-dwellers become more secure in their environment, cave-dwellers find this security severely unsettled by the unexplained appearance of a giant monolith, cave-dwellers carry out war of domination against rival band. The relation of the monolith to the cave-dwellers, then, is to severely unsettle their sense of security and superiority in their environment, a sense reinforced by the introduction of a score repeated throughout the film that is as ominous as it is elegiac and apocalyptic. At this stage in the game, the only thing the monolith reveals is its presence, which is alarming enough to trigger a period of anxiety. If we are to read between the lines and view these scenes from the alien perspective, the monolith is sent to earth to establish that there is sentient life there. Once this is established, the monolith is sent up to the moon and buried there like a giant cosmic cookie jar for such a time as humans have sufficient technology to reach it. The probe's detection of radio technology used in its vicinity is enough to trigger a transmission of its own, and so the plot thickens.

Does this undermine the sense that the probe is the medium of a transmission from God? Only at the strictly literal level of the narrative proper. At the level of symbolic resonance, the link to scripture couldn't be clearer. I'm not sure where you're coming from in accusing the film of absurdity and a lack of style. Certainly, 2001: A Space Odyssey is as stylized a film as any other work by Stanley Kubrick, who was a highly stylized director. The film is ingenious for using a narrative of space exploration to dramatically reconfigure "the possibilities of cinematic space and form for the general public." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror Revised Edition p. 39) Suddenly, all those stabilizing rules they taught you in film school no longer apply in zero gravity, but Kubrick uses this to great effect to unsettle the audience in a sustained way. For our generation, this film has been so widely imitated and parodied that we often don't realize what an initial effect it had until we look at the science fiction films before it, and realize what a quantum leap it was for the genre. As for absurdity, I'm not sure what exactly you find absurd, so I can't comment on this.

[Cognitive Gear]

Eh, I don't know if I would read any kind of Christian message, positive or negative, into 2001. Kubrick believed in some sort of higher power, but didn't know what to identify it as. If you are going to find a message about Christianity, it won't be a message that is found within the film itself.

Though to be fair, I will admit that a large part of the intention in crafting 2001 was that it would have no specified meaning, such that any interpretation of the events could be considered valid. (though not of the

I do think that 2001 is one of the greatest films ever made, but I say that from a film-as-art standpoint, not a film-as-entertainment standpoint. As a result, I don't often recommend it to people who are not either a "film geek" or an aspiring film maker. I tend to find that most people outside of those circles don't enjoy the type of film that 2001 is.

Earlier today I watched Solaris (2002):

It was.... alright. It felt much more like a romance set in a sci-fi setting than a sci-fi film, and as a result it doesn't really stand on it's own, IMO. Focusing on the two main characters was possibly the largest flaw for the film as a whole. It caused many of the sci-fi elements to go on ignored, resulted in flat, uninteresting side characters, and left the entire universe feeling underdeveloped.

[ich1990]

No, the sequence goes cave-dwellers, screaming match with rival band of cave-dwellers, contemplative caveman discovers you can use bones to crack bones, cave-dwellers' hunting becomes more secure, cave-dwellers use bones as implement for preserving established order by beating challenger to death, cave-dwellers become more secure in their environment, cave-dwellers find this security severely unsettled by the unexplained appearance of a giant monolith, cave-dwellers carry out war of domination against rival band.

Ah, sorry. I was using wikipedia to refresh my memory and it orders the events differently.

I'm not sure where you're coming from in accusing the film of absurdity and a lack of style. Certainly, 2001: A Space Odyssey is as stylized a film as any other work by Stanley Kubrick, who was a highly stylized director. The film is ingenious for using a narrative of space exploration to dramatically reconfigure "the possibilities of cinematic space and form for the general public." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror Revised Edition p. 39) Suddenly, all those stabilizing rules they taught you in film school no longer apply in zero gravity, but Kubrick uses this to great effect to unsettle the audience in a sustained way. For our generation, this film has been so widely imitated and parodied that we often don't realize what an initial effect it had until we look at the science fiction films before it, and realize what a quantum leap it was for the genre. As for absurdity, I'm not sure what exactly you find absurd, so I can't comment on this.

First I would like to mention that in no way am I trying to insult you, your film analysis abilities, or your appreciation for this movie. I am indicating my dislike for the film. In my experience, when it comes to analyzing art people rarely change their minds once they have gotten an impression of something. Art tends to be subjective enough that people can reinterpret any type of material to the point that it becomes "good" and meaningful to them. For instance, I enjoy Metal music, something that is incomprehensible to many people. Thus, I don't think we will probably come to an agreement on this movie, although I think many of your comments are interesting.

I will try to explain what I meant by 2001: A Space Odyssey being absurd and having a lack of style. First, what I mean by absurd is that it does not seem to care about making sense. It uses many symbols that are recognizable, such as a human fetus, spaceships, and cave men, but displays them in an incongruous fashion. Towards the end of the movie, for instance, a man is teleported through a Star Gate (reminscent of how I imagine a laser show would appear on an acid trip), finds himself in a Louis XVI styled room, looks around and keeps seeing himself in successively older states of existence, then is turned into a space flying fetus by a gaint black stone tower. There is something to be said for making events ambiguous and open to interpretation but it gets to a point where things become so unrelated to reality as to be absurd.

As for its lack of style, I don't mean to say it isn't stylized. I mean it is not stylish (or well executed). When, for instance, I say that a action movie gunfight is stylish, I mean that all the details are correct and it is executed well. For instance, the biggest detractant of the movie for me is its length. Each scene seems to be way too long. Thus, the cinematics are not executed well, and the movie doesn't flow right. It doesn't have style. I admit that my use of the word style is ambiguous, but that is what I meant.

[ich1990]

Valkyrie

I didn't have any previous knowledge of the plot (although I knew the ending obviously), so a lot of the details of the German Resistance assassination attempt were new to me. Unfortunately, the director didn't really seem to be able to derive as much tension out of the plot as he could have. Still good though.

21

The movie itself is pretty entertaining, with a little bit of editing, and I tend to enjoy watching geeks get an upper hand in life. Still, the message of this movie is pretty terrible.

[Bobtheduck]

"And then there were none"

I got it because it was one of the big influences for Umineko no Naku Koro ni, but I thought the name of the host was pretty funny, too... U.N. Owen.

Supposedly it's a man, but I thought U.N. Owen was her