The Master

Never really worked for me. Just interesting enough to not be boring. Movie doesn't end, it just stops.

Doubt

I like it that they didn't really answer the question of what the priest did or didn't do. Enjoyed it enough, not Catholic so cant relate to that part. My God, Amy Adams is hot even as a nun.

Synecdoche, New York

Started out as a normal movie then went to a what the hell is going on movie. Never could figure it out. Thought Caden may have been dead, Adele or even Olive. Waited for the end thinking that may answer what was going on, fell asleep about 10 minutes before it was over. Read the synopsis on Wikipedia this morning. Not sure if they got it right or not. Never understood the burning house that Hazel lived in either. Movie most likely a bit over my head.

Frozen

I've seen this movie a half dozen times now, and I'm still loving it. This time I thought about the music and why I like it. The music is very theatrical, like a broadway production, and reminds me of seeing Wicked and Book of Mormon. So it shouldn't surprise me that the songs were performed and written by alumns of both those musicals.

There is a lot of crap out there made for little girls, so I'm happy there's at least one princess movie out there where love at first sight is dumb, girls can be the hero of the adventure instead of the prize, and the strongest love is between sisters. I really do applaud the filmmakers for introducing all the normal princess themes then turning them on their heads.

8/10

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Classic. Timeless. Still as clever and sweet as I remember.

8/10

Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3 - Viva La Fiesta!

A clinical case study on the collateral damage of living in a fame obsessed society.

I lied. It's a movie where talking dogs throw a quinceanera and eat peanut butter.

2/10

lol...why are you watching the Beverly Hills Chihuahua movies??

Day care is closed for the day. A good dad will do anything for his girls, even endure crap like Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

lol...I figured

haha Barca

I see you all over letterboxd like a rash

PTO snow day at home with the kids is a good way to pad my stats. I'm almost up to that movie per day pace.

I was a HUGE Winnie the Pooh fan growing up (well still am).

check out the new version they made with Craig Ferguson as owl.
really well done n owl steals every scene he's in.
I've seen it at least 4x n never gets old.

Watched Treasure of the Sierra Madre last night and The Maltese Falcoln recently, loved both, so I'm thinking of going on a Humphrey Bogart binge, what would you all recommend?

I've already put Casablanca, High Sierra, The African Queen, The Caine Mutiny, The Big Sleep, and In a Lonely Place in my queue, but his his wikipedia page lists around 80 movies, most of which I've never heard of.

Key Largo, To Have and Have Not, The Roaring Twenties, and Angels with Dirty Faces are all pretty good.

In a Lonely Place is my favorite Bogie movie and I think his performance is one of the greatest in cinema.

Compliance

How the **** is this a true story?

I'm probably like a lot of people, and immediately after watching this crazy movie I looked up online to see exactly how "true" this "based on true events" movie is. The shocking truth is that the answer is VERY.

Pretty much this movie is one of those psychology / sociology experiments where you put one group in authority over the other group and see how far you can push it. In this case the authority is a fast food manager over an 18 year old employee, and the thing pushing it further is a pervert with a phone card pretending to be the police.

I can see how people can actively dislike this movie. It gets under you skin, makes you feel dirty, and causes you to lose faith in humanity. But when those reactions are the goal of the film, sometimes you have to tip your hat. It's effective. It's a grueling. But the message of self autonomy and distrust authority is a good one.

What an odd choice for Valentine's Day.

7/10

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day = awesome. Saw it many many times with my kids when they were younger.

LONG list of really great actors and a great director and the Movie looks wonderful in High Definition.


Richard Brooks ... Director
Burt Lancaster ... Bill Dolworth
Lee Marvin ... Henry 'Rico' Fardan
Claudia Cardinale ... Mrs. Maria Grant
Robert Ryan ... Hans Ehrengard
Woody Strode ... Jake Sharp
Jack Palance ... Jesus Raza
Ralph Bellamy ... Joe Grant

The Professionals won't win any "best of" contests, but the images and colors in the movie are great... that combined with the many close-up dialogs of some great vintage Hollywood faces and a very young Claudia Cardinal make this one a must see. There is also a lot of Militaria and very snappy come back dialog and make this a great "guy film"

The overall idea for the story is really solid, it just that some parts of the movie fall into Hollywood formalism.

The story follows four mercenaries that are hired to go into Mexico to rescue and old rich mans young Mexican wife from a group of Mexican Revolutionaries. these four mercenaries kill and deliver on there promise only to in the end realize that it is actually the Old Rich white man that is the perverse character, and that the wife actually loves her revolutionary capture.

well i guess i wont be seeing this movie then

Pontypool - Very interesting movie, I believe it was an indie that came out of Canada a couple of years ago. The plot is this: Grant Mazzy, a disgraced big-time radio DJ, has become the morning DJ of a small Canadian town named Pontypool. He clashes with his producer, Syd, as he tries to jazz up the boring small town news, which upsets her as she is a by-the-book person who grew up in the town. Something mysterious starts happening in the town as the radio station starts receiving calls of strange riots breaking out. Grant, Syd and Laurel, the assistant producer, try to figure out what's exactly going on from all these truly bizarre reports they keep getting as the Canadian police and the National Army start to barricade the town. The majority of the movie takes place in the radio station itself, so you the viewer are forced to try to figure out what's happening in the town along with these main characters. It is definitely a unique twist on this genre that I found enjoyable (though I think it ends a bit too abruptly). Definitely watch if you're a thriller/horror movie fan (though there's not a lot of gore/horror). It reminds me a lot of the 1960s movie The Haunting, where the suspense builds from imagining what you could be hearing than what you actually see.

The Lego Movie




4/5
Very fun movie with one insanely catchy tune that will lodge in your head like a brainspider. It's goofy and surreal, with plenty of jokes, some of which are at oldschool Lego expense, which is fine. Without spoiling however, I think this movie is not just working on a meta-level (big deal, a lot of kids movies do that, to keep the adults interested), but actually transcends this in the last act and becomes meta-meta-level (meta about meta-levelling).

Combine this is various butt-reference jokes, Batman, robo-pirate and similar, and you have something that the kids will enjoy, but so will the adults. In the screening I was in, you could hear the kids really laughing in places, but you could also hear the adults laughing just as hard in the same places.

Definitely recommended.

I've been looking forward to seeing the Lego Movie for a while now. I was a bit disappointed to find out that it was made using computer Lego and not real Lego.

Toy Story remade with actual toys.

Last weekend, 42 came on HBO. I have to say, it didn't do it for me. I didn't think that it went far enough in showing what Jackie Robinson actually went through; I never felt as if the character was truly in danger (which I understand to have been very much the case in real life). Meh.

Went to the The Monuments Men last week. On the plus side, by accident, I got a ticket at a theater which had the really plush lazy-boy type recliners.

The movie never felt as if it got going to me. Something happens, chop, we're off to another place. Didn't feel as if a comprehensive story was being told.

I don't know, I'm more of a movies-for-entertainment person than the story telling. I probably just didn't get the deeper meaning in these.

Not to say they were bad, just kind of left me flat.

watched killer joe again.
liked it even more the 2nd time around.

really great performances from everyone, but MM just kills it.

thomas haden church was also great.

The House I live in

After having this on my computer for some months now, I really did not expect a documentary about the war on drugs considering the title.

Entertaining, from the get go, with a solid images and musical score. To have David Simon as a narrator never hurts neither. Love how they depict the war on drugs through the perspective of different characters : cops, judges, convicted criminals, a mother etc. Solid documentary.

8.6/10

Shane...

stunning George Stevens epic western that probably is as responsible for the anti-hero avenging angle paradigm as any western movie of that era.

Beautifully shot using Technicolor, this film really come across wonderfully on Bluray/high definition.





you'd think that alan ladd is a strange choice for an avenging angle, but as the 1950's idealistic vision of a Cowboy morality hero, he works as the character of Shane... specially when he has a gun in his hand.

He really does transform from a gentle troubled man into "the gunfighter".

misspelled angel twice... OMG

That awful kid ruins Shane for me.

Oz: The Great and Powerful

This poor movie. It never had a chance.

I love The Wizard of Oz.

I love James Franco.

I really like Sam Raimi.

I like to look at Mila Kunis.

This movie is a massive failure just in that it doesn't live up to what it could have been. You can't have just an average movie when you are following up one of the greatest movies in history and you are putting some talent into it. And this movie is painfully average.

Colorful. Action packed. Flat.

There's just nothing here. Raimi's direction is generic and straight forward. That dumb monkey was annoying. Franco should have been really good in the charismatic con man role, but even he looks like he's sleep walking through most of it. In the end it all just feels like a money grab, which it probably was.

The one bright spot is the CGI for China Doll, which was just breathtaking.

5/10