Just rewatched the seminal HK comedy classic, God of Gamblers pairing Chow Yun Fat and Andy Lau in a comedy yarn interspersed with action and gambling.

A film that definitely showcases Chow's comedic abilities in contrast to his usual stoic badass roles.





The whole film is on youtube but the subtitles are terrible

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMdPb0iMM4

Sorry for the snarky response, but...

Watch The Silence of the Lambs then re-watch The Silence of the Lambs, then don't watch any of the others because they will only disappoint you and make you sad and mad and disappointed.

Unless of course you watch all of the other ones first.

Then you might end up happy.

bleh, I liked Manhunter.

While we're talking about a Mann film, I watched Heat for the first time ever the other day ( I know). Damn good movie. Great heist scenes. 9/10

La Strada - rewatched it in my film class. Still amazing. 10/10

The Bicycle Thief - still amazing. 10/10

A Tale of Two Sisters - creepy as hell. great atmosphere, great suspense. Worthwhile Korean horror movie. But avoid reading any plot synopses before watching. Also, it's pretty damn confusing but I think I get the basic gist of the plot.

Weekend - wacky, dark episodic comedy from Godard. I found it very similar to Bunuel's Discreet Charm and Phantom of Liberty in style. It's quite funny, but very very dark. Which I like . 9/10

Just watched Comedy Centrals Roast of Charlie Sheen..

They are as always hillariously evil.

My fav. part was definitely Mike Tyson saying the other guys speech was so bad he wish he could have bitten his own ears off lol

I like Hannibal, it's wonderfully over-the-top.

Watched Super this afternoon.

Totally disappointed. They should have cut some of the violence out in order to go a little deeper into the guy, especially after .

However my Netflix copy of the movie froze up with about 3 minutes to go I saw but after that nothing. Did anything happen after that that would have changed my feelings about the movie overall?

Also the sound levels were annoying. I could barely hear the conversations people had but any action sequences I had to turn it down as it gave me a headache.

Also part 2- why did they do nothing to make us like his wife? I was hoping

4/10

Ken

Moneyball

Like watching a baseball game.

Grade: D

Watched Alien for the first time in years recently.

It really is a masterpiece. What's amazing is it was made in the late 70's and still looks better and is a more realistic portrayal of the future than pretty much 95% of the high tech CGI sci fi crap you see nowadays.

Ridley Scott does a great job of meticulously setting up the environment and the mood and the build up of the first hour to the more intense stuff later on is perfect.

The casting is also quite great, casting older actors made it feel much more real. Too often movies like this are going to be a bunch of young pretty people, but you really got the feeling it was this average jo blue collar space crew working on a mining ship

Re-watched The Piano Teacher last night.

I don't think it could be any more perfect. Haneke has some mysterious way of rolling things out in a sort of starkly lyrical way, so we are only seeing the facts, but we are seeing them with the artistry of his not interfering. He uses virtually no score (save a lot of Schubert and Schumann, all necessary), he doesn't muddy the characters with any conflicts that are not germane to the main point, and he is unflinchingly honest. Of course, he is adept behind the camera without being ostentatious. There are subtle moments in many of his films where the camera is not ideally placed for the action (in the locker room, here, for example, or in the living room scene in Funny Games or...throughout Cache), but in the bigger picture, it is amazingly adept.

It doesn't hurt to have an amazing actress like Isabelle Huppert. I doubt this would have worked with much of anyone else. Her character (borderline personality, sadomasochistic tendencies, sexual dysfunction, flat affect...possible sociopath) is so difficult and so alien to most people, it's amazing how well she pulls it off, really. If you have a moment where you feel pity or sympathy, it is quickly snatched away, as it should be.

And the male lead is awesome as well.

In any event, this is an amazing film that I doubt would work for me in anyone else's hands. I'm sure von Trier would have just pissed me off with it, for example (see Antichrist for illustration).

i really don't understand how anyone can feel that way about The Piano Teacher. It is just an unpleasant movie, where the character motivations are completely haphazard.

While it might be "unpleasant" to some degree (no more so than, say, Salo or I Stand Alone or Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer), I would definitely not call any of the motivations "haphazard."

To call Erika's motivations haphazard is odd, as it is clear she is mentally ill, and that she is conflicted as to just how far she wants to follow her mentally ill instincts. She is seen ineffectively trying to rein in her madness in order to at least try to experience normal "love."

As for Walter, his actions are in no way "haphazard" either. He reminds me of Jeffery Beaumont (Blue Velvet), in that he is conflicted about what Erika wants (totally alien to him), but then, perhaps out of wanting to please her, tries to comply, only to (maybe) find himself enjoying the dynamic he had never before explored.

What is "haphazard" about this?

Not arguing, just asking.

i've seen this movie a couple of years ago, so i don't remember it that well, however i remember that these two actions just did not make sense to me at all.
These and many other behaviors simply don't add up with the characters that are presented to us. She is supposed to be some sort of highly respected piano player and u just can't function like that if you are a voyeuristic freak, with absolutely no self-control. The young man is supposed to be a pretty normal student who likes hockey and music, and you don't just turn into sadistic, because ur in love with Huppert and she is cold, aloof and depraved.


and the problem with most of the unpleasant scenes, were that they just weren't really necessary to present the story; they were just there for the sake of being unpleasant. the movie tries to present her as not only unstable, but as they like the most deviant person alive. . The movie just lacked any subtlety or insight into the characters and motivations behind their actions.

What percentage of people at those kinds of stores would recognize a concert pianist? You don't even have to go that far. There have been studies where they take a world famous classical musician and have them busk in a subway (playing the music they normally play) and nobody realizes. It is a very different career than a pop singer.

I think she has enough control to not blatantly fulfill her urges at work. There is a connection immediately, but she does try avoid it.


I think you are also expecting her to act logically when she is clearly disturbed. You and I would not do the things she did, but you and I are normal people with normal lives. If you don't like movies that dive into the deep end of twisted human behavior, maybe Haneke films just aren't for you.

I'm just going to weigh in here with Haneke films aren't for a lot of people. Between Benny's Video, Funny Games and Cache', I've met a lot of folks who can't stand him. Sometimes it's not even the disturbing content issue. Some just think watching a Haneke film is like watching paint dry. I'm not one of them as I like the slow paced, disturbing films but apparently I've ired many with Haneke recommendations. lol

An American Crime. Wow, just wow. I feel like it didn't affect me as much as it should've though. Still, very disturbing stuff.

Answers bolded inside and outside spoilers:

Well i simply found her character and other characters to be inconsistent and sort of existing in a movie vacuum and not in the real world. It is not that that she is disturbed, but that her actions do not bear much connection to the character she plays, or environment that she lives in.
I mean when she goes into a


Sure they maybe more depraved characters in film, but they are generally not spinsters who are well respected by others. Sure, not every movie needs to make everything clear cut about the characters, but this sort of story needed at least to give us understand something about the characters state of mind; instead of just presenting this deviant, and asking us to care for her, while a lot of unpleasant things happen.

I only have seen two films by Haneke, this and The Seventh Continent (which i hated and reviewed ITT) and i have doubts i'd enjoy any more of his work. I have no problem with disturbing movies, or movies that are as slow as watching the paint dry, but his characters seem to exist solely to make a statement/critique that he wants to make and not to actually tell a viewer some sort of story.

I enjoyed Moneyball...but it's an odd subject for a Hollywood movie.

Bolded, including in spoiler:

There was basically no mention of the subject. Sabremetrics took up maybe 10 min of the two and a half hour running time. Such a shame Sodderberg didn't do this with his original idea instead we get a humorless Major League remake without The Wild Thing.

Yeah, I think a documentary would've been a better choice...the interesting thing about the whole subject IS the math and statistics.

Exactly.

An American Crime is an amazing film but it is less difficult to get through than it's subject counterpart based on the fictional Jack Ketchum book which is based on the same real crime titled The Girl Next Door. You might want to check that one out but it is indeed a tougher watch.

Hey! Whatdoyaknow? It's on instant watch on netflix right here:

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Th...?trkid=2361637

Moonfleet (1955) Directed by Fritz Lang

October, 1757. A boy shows up to Moonfleet, with a letter from his now-deceased mother, looking for Jeremy Fox (Stewart Granger), who happens to be a smuggler. He tries to get rid of the kid, but the kid comes back. The kid's got moxie, and Granger likes that - but will he like it more than profit?
Adventure ensues. The kid's not too annoying, so thumbs up.
Overall, very good film with a nice look, although I'm not quite sure why this is on cahiers du cinema's top 100 (at #33).



Can you spot a young Jack Elam?

anyone else here have a gf that just hates any movie that's not a romantic comedy or is not like The Notebook?

i rented True Romance and watched it with with my gf and at the end she says "this movie is terrible."

and that's like one of the very few movies she has ever watched that i've rented.

edit: i guess to be fair she did like Black Swan and hated Inception, so she has some good taste i suppose