Prince of Persia is probably the 'best' one but i was more entertained by mortal kombat and i enjoyed final fantasy advent children as well but they are by no means good.

u do remember correctly. good enough to lead to like 7,000 sequels to boot.

casey affleck is mbts is an all time performance for me. cot damn. the ginger kid could have been better. michelle williams was fantastic.

Disaster Artist (James Franco and gang make a movie about the making of The Room) getting some great buzz out of SXSW.

James Franco apparently never left character, ever:



https://twitter.com/ErikDavis/status/841161003119316992

This should be either good good or terrible good.

The Great Escape

I'm a bit disappointed to be honest. For such a revered classic, I was expecting a bit more to this 3 hour mess of a movie.

The movie is based on the true story of a POW camp for officers in WWII, where a bunch of escapes are planned and executed to varying degrees of success.

I have 2 major issues with the movie. First off is the tone of the movie. Consider the classic music from it that we all know whether you've seen the film or not. (skip to about 20 seconds to get the theme)



If I knew nothing about the movie but just heard this music, I would think light hearted comedy. The attitude of the prisoners was fairly lighthearted as well. They were prisoners, but they acted like free men, wearing leather jackets, taunting the guards, etc... Unfortunately, this is a POW camp where a lot of men were killed, and I just felt like the way they handled it was still with the same lighthearted attitude along the way. Even when they tried to be somber, they ended up throwing McQueen his baseball glove in such a jovial manner.

My second problem with the movie was the length. It's almost 3 hours, and there are at least a dozen relevant characters, but with the exception of Steve McQueen, none are given enough screen time or backstory to make them memorable or make us care about them (maybe the one exception is the blind guy, but I digress). Most of the screen time is filled with just the hustle and bustle of digging the tunnels, and what went into such a complex escape. While other movies also focused solely on the heist and not so much the characters (I'm thinking Ocean's 11), the planning was so action packed that I didn't mind not really getting to know the characters. In this case I did. I just didn't care about making all the fake documents, or getting the dirt out into the yard, or any of the other clever things they did. It just didn't grab my intention.

I do agree that McQueen is badass, and I did love his character, but overall I was completely underwhelmed by this 'classic.'

Perhaps "The Great Escape" is a metaphor for the grand break from the mundane white bread 1950's as society transitioned into the mid 1960's where the hills were alive with "The Sound of Music"?

FWIW... I can not sit thru that movie either.

Give me English in the middle of the Desert any day.

My understanding is Western European and American POWs held by the Germans were treated reasonably well, and perhaps this movie better reflected the adversarial collaboration that went on in those camps compared with camps on the Russian front.

I think there is a sense that modern cinema demands a certain gritty realism from war films, but that might not necessarily reflect reality.

"Life" looks a bit like a modernized version of Alien...

Went to see Moonlight tonight, and it's pretty obvious that Wong Kar-Wai is an important influence. There's another influence at work there, too, but I can't quite see it. Overall, interesting film although Arrival is still my top pick for 2016.

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His other favorite filmmaker is Claire Denis I believe he said, Beau travail to be specific...haven't seen one of her films in awhile (White Material was meh).

I started reading about Jenkins a few minutes ago, but I didn't think of Denis while watching Moonlight. I love Beau travail as well. Didn't think White Material one of her great films, but it's worth watching.

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Amy Adams was so robbed this year. How do they not even nominate her for Best Actress for Arrival? The film could have easily gone bad without her understated, quiet performance anchoring it.

I agree although I always have trouble judging film performances. Arrival hit me on an emotional level that few films do, and much of that had to do with identifying with Adams's character.

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What if we brought to fruition our early 20s hippie dreams... What if Chomsky, Marx and Robinson Crusoe were not just textbook names, but ways of living actually applied to our life...





Viggo Mortenson is once again excellent in Captain Fantastic, a movie portraying the livelihood of a single father raising 5 kids while trying to cope with the recent death of his wife. Of course, it does not exactly make things easier that the family has totally renounced society and lives in the heart of the bush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1kH4OMIOMc

I was reluctant to watch this movie for some reason, but am sure glad I did

I watched 20th Century Women last night. Man, I guess Annette Bening got old. It seems like she was young and hot in The Grifters just the other day. In this she's a lonely 50-something divorced lady trying to raise a teen-aged son back in 1978. There are 2 younger women and a 40-something man also hovering around. A lot of the cultural stuff interested me, like the burgeoning punk/indie rock scene. I didn't love this movie, but it has a nice good-spirited vibe I'd say. Decent people trying to cope with messy confusing life situations, helping each other and whatnot.

I agree as well. And to take it a step further, I'd give her Meryl Streep's place in the category. I love Meryl Streep, but there was nothing really special about her performance in Florence Foster Jenkins.

Ant Man Yawn.

I've sworn off superhero movies but this was in my queue from some time ago. I watched it. Wish I hadn't. Not that it was bad. Just that it was another in a line of formulaic marvel uninspired blandness.

King Kong 2005 I thought I'd re-watch this in preparation for the new Kong. The first 30 minutes are a little slow, but once they hit Skull Island it is nonstop action.

I just love this movie. The detail of the action sequences is phenomenal. The Brontosauruses (Brontosauri?) stampede is superb. The little nuances of them bumping into each other and sliding on the rocks makes the action seem so realistic. There were so many other action sequences with the same level of inventiveness. The same attention to detail shows in the reactions and facial expressions of Kong. Well done Mr. Jackson.

Just a fun film.

Klute 70s noirish story of a detective hired to find a missing man. He begins his search by tracking down a prostitute who the man sent letters to.

I got fairly confused about what was going on most of the movie. The details of the connections of the missing man and the prostitute just didn't make sense. Even after seeing a plot synopsis it seemed to be somewhat murky.

The relationship between the detective (Donald Sutherland) and the prostitute (Jane Fonda) was good, but I particularly liked the illumination of Fonda's character. This, to me, was more interesting than the crime story.

Sutherland was fine but miscast. Fonda was great and received an oscar for this role.

Arrival was easily my favorite film I saw this year as well. Outstanding.

Network After a news station is bought out by a large corporation, a disgruntled news anchor threatens to kill himself on air.

The movie follows the increasingly insane on-air ramblings of the anchor along with the behind the scenes corporate politics and his meteoric rise in ratings.

Great movie. The acting was superb, especially from Finch. The main plot of the corporate infighting was spot on, but I found the subplot of the romance between two of the characters to be a little distracting. I'm not a huge fan of Dunaway so maybe that was part of it.

Most of the movie had it's feet planted firmly in reality, but it got quite surreal towards the end. It worked, though.

Although this was made in the mid 70s, the themes here hold up quite well today. Everything Beale lamented about America is still relevant.

Look for Berta (2 1/2 men) in a bit part.

Hacksaw Ridge was a pretty solid movie.
Why Vince Vaughn for that part? lol

Yeah, I didn't like Vaughn in that much at all. I've heard a number of people saying they thought he was great in it...I just didn't see it.

I think he is capable of being a good dramatic actor, he just hasn't shown it in either this or season 2 of True Detective. Maybe he used to be capable of being a good dramatic actor and somewhere along the way lost that.

My only issue with VV was he looked really old for a buck sergeant (in any era). I just chalked it up him getting busted from 1SG or something. Even then, mid-40s seems kinda high even though WW2 grunts averaged a good bit older from what I know.

There was a lot of Hollywood going on with how the guys in his unit were written. With VV they seemed to just combine all of the NCOs + drill sergeant into one character for some reason. Easy to argue he was miscast but imo the part itself was just miswritten - I thought he played it fine, considering.

One of my favorite movies. Try Stalag 17 next.

Vince Vaughn wasn't supposed to be a career NCO I don't think. A lot of times they made the older guys NCOs even though they didn't have any seniority and joined at the same time as everyone else, which makes sense given that the military was expanding from like 100,000 to 10 million.