MPfist0, I think concepts like allegory & symbolism are beyond the academy.  I actualyl forgot to put TLM on my favorite movies list in the top 10 thread, and it has nothing to do with that it's all about Lego.

I'm actually posting about the last movie I DIDN'T watch, but it is a funny anecdote, so hopefully I can share it here.  Someone came home from WalMart with the nicolas Cage Left Behind DVD.  So we planned to watch it last night.  we opened it, and THERE WAS NO DISC!  Now, I persoanlly don't believe in rapture, but veryone was upset about the missing disc, so I lightened the situation up a bit, saying, "The disc must have been taken up and the case was Left Behind!"  They thought it was amusing but I considered it downright clever.  I guess I amuse myself easily.

If the movie Left Behind was panned by critics, all the more reason for me to watch it!  I think about as much of critics as I do of most contemporary TV writers.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

This movie is just a big question mark for me.

I did not like it, yet it is a movie made by a good director, you can see that, and it actually has some moments of brilliance.
Everything is studied to be perfect: carefully composed shots, a variety of carefully thought characters, a carefully structured story. One cannot simply say the movie does not work: the movie carefully fails.

It's nice to have all those symmetrical shots, but after a few minutes I'd give anything to be able to turn my head, or at least move my eyes to a place that wasn't the center of the screen.
Characters: lots of them, well played by everyone, all of them saying the right thing at the right time, but it mostly seemed to me like everyone gave his own interpretation of the same character, actually.
The changing format, and interesting idea, remained only that: an interesting idea, not fleshed out, and, in the end, feeling rather useless (although I enjoyed watching a movie mostly in 4:3, which is quite unusual nowadays).

I started watching the movie with good expectations, I was prepared to like it, I was intrigued by a movie from a director whose previous works I enjoyed (at least the two that I saw)... I usually get my expectations right, I almost forgot what it felt like to be disappointed. Yes, it has some fun and charming moments, but everything that happened made me think: "what for?", and I couldn't think of an answer.
In the words of my brother: it's a big, pompous, elaborate decoration... a decoration of what? It's smart, all too smart for nothing.

Annie Hall

Can't believe I've never seen this before. I hate it when I find out that all this time I've been missing out on a great film.

Good comedy, well written narrative, and I really like Woody Allen's character. He's a rare example of a jerk who deserves all the crap that happens to him, yet we still follow about because he's interesting. We don't want him to suceed, but we're perfectly happy to sit back and watch him fail.

Manhattan

....it's the same film.

Well, not quite - but it's similar enough. It has all the traits present in Annie Hall, but without the comedy. Woody Allen still plays the same fussy, abusive, deeply unlikeable character - except apparently we're supposed to like him in Manhattan, whist Annie Hall worked so well because Allen's character drove everyone away from him to the point he only had the camera to turn to.

It was a mistake to watch both these films in a row. It's kind of like when I watched Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction together - except I came out of it prefering Pulp Fiction because it was like Reservoir Dogs (which I really enjoyed) but better. Manhattan is like Annie Hall only worse. I should've just watched Annie Hall twice...

No. I didn't like the film because there was nothing under all those colors, or what was there was incomplete. Wes Anderson was too much worried about style he forgot to work on the content. The movie left me empty.

Been catching up on the films from 2014.

Force Majeure (Turist) Ruben Östlund, 2014
Family drama set in the Alps. They do some skiing but mostly spend their time arguing. As someone who, as a child, had parents that tended to get upset at one another on a semi-regular basis, it really managed to capture that feel of total helplessness and anxiety over the situation that you feel as a child. Every conversation is directed insanely well. Rarely do you see films where the characters feel as genuine and alive as in this one. It raises broader questions about machoism and family will still feeling very intimate and tense. Almost every single frame had my pulse going maximum speed.

Whiplash Damien Chazelle, 2014
Films about drummers shouldn't be this good. It's baffling how well put together this film is. J.K. Simmons is - as everybody is already aware of - worthy of any acting award anywhere. However, I don't want people to think Simmons is carrying the entire film on his shoulders because it's such a spectacular experience either way. The combination of visuals and sounds, and how it's used is just baffling. The last fifteen minutes are some of the best fifteen minutes in any film I've ever seen. It had me repeatedly punching the air with my fist to the beat of the drums. I was sore after. It's that engaging

Inherent Vice Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014
I'll refrain from trying to write an insightful review until I've given it a well-deserving rewatch. I need to wrap my head around it. Right now it's laying somewhere inbetween insanely entertaining and insanely difficult (which I do understand is the feeling they're going for, but y'know, I still feel like having a basic understanding of the plot before judging it, which I, uh, don't quite have right now).
It's a strange but also strangely enjoyable ride.

Leviathan (Левиафан) Andrey Zvyagintsev
A crushing experience that left me completely empty after I'd finished it. It's an extremely daring portrayal of contemporary Russia and its current (defunct) state, as well as being an enthralling family drama as they struggle to stay alive. It's hilarious and simultaneously philosophical and intelligent, it's ambitious in scope yet down to earth, and definitely one of the best of the past year. First and so far only of Zvyagintsev's films I've seen, and I'll have to fix that very soon.

Maps to the Stars David Cronenberg, 2014
It features a great cast, all playing interesting characters, but they aren't really allowed to do anything the least bit interesting until the last thirty minutes. If the ninety-or-so minutes leading up to the finale had been engaging I could possibly have loved it, but it's a painfully dull set of intertwining stories, all shot with the most boring cinematography I've probably ever seen.

Birdman Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2014
One of the best films I've seen. Many seem to have the same feeling about it. You should all see this film (unless you really love superhero films with all your heart, then maybe skip this one).

Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, 2014
I like the Dardenne brothers and what I've seen of them; I like their kitchen sink dramas about real and genuine people in real and genuine situations and their gritty and unflattering portrayal of the all of that, but this one just didn't affect me like I hoped. It had a strong finish, but what led up to it was just "meh" to me. I can see the greatness, but I just didn't feel it. The emotional connection wasn't there.

Hmm. Seems like the people that made this video had the same opinions, as far as vibrant color palettes and symmetrical camera angles, over character development, go.

The Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

I actually saw this one on Monday, but I never got the chance to post a full review about it, here, up until now. Anyways, the film's a lot of fun, and John Malkovich makes for a funny villain, but there is a lot of the usual "forced humor" that you can expect from Dreamworks. Still though, there are a lot of jokes that work. The last third is a letdown, though, and it gets a little too silly, even for an animated movie. So, definitely not the studio's best work, and I'm not feeling too excited about Home, even though I did enjoy the short film that inspired it, which was played before theatrical screenings of Mr. Peabody and Sherman, last year.

5.8/10

Last edited by Mickey (January 21, 2015 (05:00pm))

Recently I watched two films, both of which curiously enough involve dentists.

Inherent Vice

I'm not sure what to make of it.  I think I liked it...

This is definitely one of those films I'll have to re-watch it (possibly several times) to fully appreciate it.  The plot, if it can be described as such, is extraordinarily complicated, with several scenes that may or may not be the drug-induced hallucinations of the protagonist.  It's frustratingly elliptical and slow-moving, yet oddly hypnotic and weirdly charming at the same time.  The acting is one of the strongest aspects, there are some really great performances--Sportello, "Bigfoot", and Dr Threeply in particular (the scene in the asylum in particular is really funny).  I'm not sure what to make of the cinematography, as it feels rather basic and the shots are very long-drawn out (oftentimes there will be single shots of characters just talking... for 20 or so minutes), though this style is clearly intentional.  I feel like this film is the cinematic equivalent of a food with a strange flavour that you don't know what to make of when you eat it, but with a really nice aftertaste.  Still, it's just worth watching to see all of these weird characters interact with each other.  Plus, there's a lot of funny dialogue:

There are a few scenes that personally felt kind of awkward to me, but otherwise it's an extremely weird film, yet strangely appealing nonetheless.

Django Unchained

Who knew a film about slavery could be so much fun?

It's the second Tarantino film I've seen.  There's a lot of language, especially the use of the "n-word", but I didn't mind it so much as it felt pretty justified, given the setting and subject matter this film deals with.  There's also a lot of violence, but, again, that's hardly surprising.  At the same, there's enough material for some serious thought.  I quite like the theme of Schultz and Django playing the parts of "characters" in order to get close to their targets, and even though they're "heroic" both end up doing morally questionable things, or are forced to stand by and watch as innocent people suffer.

The acting is great to watch, with the characters perfectly cast.  Despite the fact that many of the actors play "against type" (if such a thing exists) they all do excellent jobs.  I do think I preferred Christoph Waltz in Inglorious B4$t3rds (for which he also won an Oscar), but he's always fun to watch and I really liked his role here, and he has some of the best lines in the film.  Leo DiCaprio puts in a great performance as the odious Calvin Candie, (especially when he goes all-out crazy during the "phrenology" scene).  The character of Stephen is particularly interesting, not least since it's highly unusual to see Samuel L. Jackson portray a character that is physically crippled and submissive yet wily.  He is perhaps one of the most intriguing characters in the film.  He's sycophantic yet cunning, and in the end smarter and more dangerous than Candie.

Despite its almost 3-hour length, though, some of the characters feel underdeveloped.  We barely get to see Broomhilda do anything, and Django himself seems to be pushed to the sidelines a lot until the end of the film. 

  The plotting is weak at times, too.  While the beginning is great, the pacing lags a fair bit towards the middle, though it picks up again towards the end.  There's quite a slow build-up, but the ending more than makes up for it.  The cinematography is great, and from the opening credits onwards it's clear it's meant to pay homage to classic Westerns, even to somebody like me, who hasn't seen many such films.  I particularly love the use of over-dramatic zooms:

On the whole, I feel that it manages to balance the serious cruelty of slavery with the lighter tone of some of the other parts quite well, and despite (or perhaps because of) the violence the ending is so gloriously over-the-top one cannot help but love it.  And then you feel a bit guilty for loving it.

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (February 4, 2015 (06:51pm))

The LEGO Movie

I have a special rule for not watching a movie until it's been a year since I last saw it to keep it fresh.  Since today is the anniversary of The LEGO Movie, I've watched it again.

It's still awesome the second time!

Happy Freedom Friday.