Since it doesn't have its own thread (unless you count the Breaking Bad one) I'll put this here.
The Fifth Estate. - Awful film. Bill Condon's type if visuals just don't work with a biopic. It's all kind of tedious. I will say Assange comes off fairly well in the film, strange childhood issues they introduced into the story aside. But they do portray him as a real human with flaws instead of someone who walks on water, so klimov will hate it.

We just finished The Conjuring. Probably James Wans most fully realised film so far, with his earlier directing gigs being only barable in bits and pieces. At least this has a good, solid cast and some really interesting camera work. Vera Fermiga is always enjoyable. Some creepy stuff for sure.

R.I.P.D. - meh. Another forgettable bland Ryan Reynolds action film. Kind of a rip off of Men in Black and Robocop rolled together.

Looking forward to the Conjuring, strangely not so much with the R.I.P.D.

Earlier this week I watched Only God Forgives, beautifully shot as expected, kind of a trifle of a crime drama story, much darker and less appealing than Drive. Based on watching 3 Refn films and reading a couple of interviews, I think dude has a cinematic violence fetish and his movies are just excuses to string together moments of human on human cruelty.

A Band Called Death, There's a thread so everyone knows about it. Never heard of them before this. That album is great.

Searching for Sugarman - Doc about a singer/songwriter named Rodriguez that never took off in the states but gained huge popularity in South Africa...... without ever knowing about it until these people made this documentary. Really cool story imo.

I need to see both of those, I know at least one of them is on Netflix. I have read that the "no career until now" for Sugarman is somewhat exaggerated though, he toured internationally and sold records here and there for a couple of decades, which I guess is glossed over for dramatic purposes.

Monster's University: Amusing enough but missing a lot of the usual Pixar heart and storytelling. It's not a bad Pixar film (*cough* Cars 2 *cough*) considering it's a prequel, but it's certainly not them at their best. I'm pretty sure this exists as a cash grab to sell more toys.

White House Down: Die Hard in the White House. With an annoying kid thrown in.

I really kind of despised Monsters University, seemed like a creatively bankrupt cash grab. I didn't see Brave but heard it was a pretty mixed bag, and I refused to see Cars 2 after the snore that was Cars.

Just got back from a buddy's house, was invited over to catch up and watch one of his recent blu-ray purchases, Crank. I have to say, I see why this has a cult following. It revels in its ridiculousness and does go out of its way to take a standard action movie scenario and kick it up a notch on the silly scale.

We also watched the cult segment from V/H/S/2, directed by the guy who did The Raid, and it was damn fine, highly recommend that. Will probably watch the rest of it tomorrow, but this segment is pretty inspired over the top horror.

Guys, it's a mistake to take any Pixar movie seriously. The closest any of them get to a real film is the first Toy Story, thanks to the relative subtleties of the Whedon script. Otherwise, I have to go by the barometer of whether the kids like the film or not - in that sense, Cars 2 was one of their most successful efforts. The kids quite enjoyed Monsters University too although that being said, yeah, I don't like the messages the film sends out - Sully destined to be a great scarer by birth, Mike not up to it despite his hard work and ambition... Know your place, little one... Solution: get your kids watching Miyazaki and Charlie Chaplin instead...

The Incredibles is one of the best superhero flicks ever made, and probably in my personal Top 20. Wall-E has a variety of sweet nods to other sci-fi films and a decent message, albeit a bit hypocritical coming from a multinational conglomerate. Even Finding Nemo is at times a gorgeous piece of animation. So no, I don't buy your thesis. Pixar has made quality kiddie product before, but they seem to have lost it.

Viewings from the past couple of weeks:

The Conjuring: Supremely overrated. Like the period detail and the cast, but the big scare scenes fall completely flat. As for it being "based on a true story," well... in real life, this was probably more a case of religious wackos screwing around with a woman who was suffering from a severe psychological illness and highly susceptible to suggestions of "demonic possession."

The Purge: Serviceable B movie with a novel premise. I wouldn't want to be here in Arkansas during The Annual Purge, as awash in guns and evangelical loons as it is.

This is the End: Some laughs, but also long stretches without.

12 Years a Slave: Excellent drama about an ugly, still painful stain on the American psyche. A number of moments were so painful I couldn't help but look away. Main minor quibble — the star cameos (most offensively, Brad Pitt's) totally take you out of the experience and threaten to turn it into just another Oscar-season prestige production.

Frances Ha: Noah Baumbach's output is inconsistent if nothing else, but this is his most purely pleasurable work since Kicking and Screaming. Delightful black-and-white photography and central performance by Greta Gerwig.

Parkland: From Vincent Bugliosi's 1,600-page JFK opus Hollywood derived this oddly inconsequential 94-minute melodrama. There's a kernel of an idea — systems meant to safeguard society and ensure our health are vulnerable to fate, or, in this case, a nutcase with a $13 mail-order rifle — but the script is in an inexplicable race to get to the end. And most of the actors are reduced to portraying types — Paul Giamatti plays Zapruder as a ball of tics and body-heaving grief, Billy Bob Thornton's Secret Service boss is stoic and twangy and Ron Livingston's FBI man wears a constant "oh crap" expression after realizing he blew an early lead on Oswald. Speaking of the assassin, he appears in a single scene — and it's far and away the best in the picture. Little-known actor Jeremy Strong totally nails Oswald's weird detachedness, his uncanny ability to seem both a complete nobody and yet somehow unforgettable. Total missed opportunity here to plum the strange inner world of this man at the center of tumultuous events.

Parker: For some reason it took numerous sittings to make it through what's ultimately a typical Statham action yarn with many draggy scenes between few moments of face-kicking. It's baffling that producers seem unable to construct decent B movie exercises around a guy seemingly made for them.

The Heat: Just awful. Stars flail around desperately for sitcom laughs and miss the mark nearly every time.

The Lords of Salem: Rob Zombie's least plot-driven feature. I'm amazed it got the theatrical run it did, brief as it was, as I can only imagine the tiny audiences staring at the screen in absolute bewilderment. An excuse for Zombie to indulge his fascination with Polanski, Kubrick and Church of Satany devil-worship melodrama, but oddly engaging (watching it while approaching a half-asleep state may have helped the experience). Yes, his wife has the lead role again, but on the plus side there's the expected parade of long-forgotten bargain-rate actors traipsing through: Meg Foster, Dee Wallace, María Conchita Alonso, etc.

The CG animation in all these films is cutting edge, but that's not what we're talking about is it? And even so, the best CG animation in the world can't touch the hand-drawn brilliance of Miyazaki's Ponyo. As for The Incredibles, even the kids don't like that one much if at all.

klimov wrote:The CG animation in all these films is cutting edge, but that's not what we're talking about is it? And even so, the best CG animation in the world can't touch the hand-drawn brilliance of Miyazaki's Ponyo. As for The Incredibles, even the kids don't like that one much if at all.

The kids=your kid, I assume? My kids fucking love The Incredibles. I have yet to meet an American kid who doesn't fucking love The Incredibles, maybe 6 year olds get their snob on better overseas but the movie appeals to kids from what I've seen. My kids happen to also love Ponyo, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away (not quite canon but The Borrowers too). Funny enough, all can co-exist in the quality kiddie movie category. Let's agree to agree that current Pixar kind of sucks, eh?

That'd be three, although the new one hasn't seen any television yet - indeed, we've decided to prevent this until she's at least one year old... Far and away my son's favourite program I should say is a BBC thing called Octonauts. An official US DVD comes out in January, or you can get a Canadian boxset here. Apparently they've re-dubbed some of the voices to give them American accents!

This is the End - I suppose I laughed more than I should have with a film filled with so many people I dislike. It was about an hour longer than it should have been but had some chuckles here and there. I give it bonus props for being so completely over the top story-wise. But damn do I hate most of the people in this film.

Silent Night, Deadly Night - went to the midnight showing in the local theater on friday. took my 17-yo son. first, if this is the much-hyped "new HD transfer", holy shit is it terrible. entire film looks (and sounds) like someone recorded a 4th-gen VHS copy with their HD cell phone. in other words, exactly how i saw it nearly 30 years ago. that was disappointing. however, the film itself is still as hilarious as ever. great holiday viewing. PUNISH!

_Marcus_ wrote:We just finished The Conjuring. Probably James Wans most fully realised film so far, with his earlier directing gigs being only barable in bits and pieces. At least this has a good, solid cast and some really interesting camera work. Vera Fermiga is always enjoyable. Some creepy stuff for sure.

We watched that over the weekend and I give it a hearty thumbs up too, Wan doesn't reinvent the wheel but by gar he gets how to make that particular wheel spin. He has his jump scares and creepy shit in the back of the frame mojo down to a science.

Not a movie, but I searched and no thread for it came up. Finally started watching the show "The Wire" after hearing so much hype about it for so long. I am halfway through the final season and it is pretty cool. It started out kind of boring but I am glad I stuck with it. Really cool how every season is like a different sector of the city that all ties together. And every one is better than the last. Also cool that every season they have about 2 or 3 new cast members that were in OZ. I don't think I will be calling it the best tv drama ever as I hear so much. But it is good. Was a good choice for something to watch until Shameless is back.

I need to give it another try, but I watched some of the pilot without great interest and my brother told me "yeah, good but feels like eating your t.v. vegetables more than having fun" and those two experiences didn't combine for much enthusiasm.

Yep, good description. I almost quit after the 1st season, but someone told me to keep at it as it just gets better and better leading up to an amazing final episode, which I am still 5 episodes away from. You got to knock out the vegetables, then get to the good meat part, then finally dessert. But it's all a sum of the parts to make a pretty damn good meal.