Last movie you watched......

Elisabeth Shue can hold my own.

I watched Buried on Amazon video on demand last night. Hmm, two Ryan Reynolds flicks in the same week. I was impressed. It was good enough to keep my attention throughout. Wouldn't say I was blown away, but again, impressed. And trying to recognize voices over the phone was fun.


Spoiler alert
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If you're in the mood for a happy ending, watch something else.

 

I'm going through the Best Picture nominees that are on DVD since it's difficult for me to actually get to the theater. The Kids Are All Right and Inception were underwhelming, to say the least. The former was trite and shallow. The latter spent too much time trying to develop a super-complicated premise without developing the characters.

Hope it gets better from here.

 

Black Swan

It was ridiculous.
And Natalie Portman can't act her way out of a paper bag.

Anyone here like it? I'd be eager to hear the flip side.

Thanks

 

"The Social Network" is entertaining and provokes at least some thought, but it's flawed in a lot of ways. First of all, no matter what you read, it's not a meditation on the Facebook generation or anything that you've read. The critics desperately want it to be that. It's basically a timeless story of a ruthless entrepreneur. Like they said on a Slate spoiler podcast I listened to today: "It might as well have been about the inventor of the coffee machine." I suspect a lot of middle-age critics don't want to sound like they're missing some grand social networking theme, so they project onto the movie something that isn't really there.

Another thing (slight spoiler, but not really)








The flashback device is a big turn-off for me and completely unnecessary. Everybody is doing it now. Everybody. Since "Memento," nobody can make a straight movie, and it is getting annoying. I remember I loved "Michael Clayton," but even that movie had a gratuitous car explosion in the opening scene, then flashed back. It turned out the explosion had nothing to do with the plot whatsoever, but it was like the screenwriter/director needed to hang that tension over everything that happened. Pisses me off. Same thing here. It's like we have to know right away that this is all going to be a mess that ends up in lawsuits.

It's a fucking copout and, frankly, I'm tired of it. If you don't think your foreshadowing is doing the job as far as building tension, then get better at foreshadowing. Get better at suspense. Flashing back (forward?) to lawyer depositions shows you don't trust your material. Or you're lazy. Then they throw in the Rashida Jones character to gratuitously give us the Mark Zuckerberg psychoanalysis, in case we missed that from the plot and characterization. Another copout.

I've posted this on somewhere else on here, but I am beginning to wonder if movies are getting worse, or if we've simply been spoiled by "The Wire," "LOST," "Mad Men," and other television shows, including comedies like "Arrested Development" and "The Office" (first three or four seasons). So much time and space to let characters and plot lines breathe and develop organically.

 

"Rabbit Hole" - Despite the extremely depressing subject matter (a couple dealing with their grief after their 4 year old is killed), I didn't walk out of the theater totally sad. Of course, I'm not a parent. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt were both very, very good. Nicole Kidman has laid off the Botox ever so slightly. I think I may have seen some lines on her face.

 

Yeah, I gotta echo that. I eventually watched it so many times I just turned off the subtitles.

 

I just caught "District 9" on Encore.

Interesting. Unlike most stuff, I did not immediately delete from the DVR. I may give it a quick encore.

 

We've just seen:
'Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage' - interesting, not great
'The Dungeon Masters' - I really liked this doc about three people who play Dungeons and Dragons. Sad and funny. GF said it wasn't as good as 'Darkon.'
'Flame and Citron' - I wanted to like this but I couldn't. It is too slow. I don't mind a slow pace, but this is excruciating.

 

Regarding the Rush documentary ... it's great for fans (proud to be guilty as charged), but it's probably not going to sway any haters. And non-fans probably aren't as interested as the rest of us in the blow-by-blow accounts of recording "La Villa Strangiato"

Still, the filmmakers got quite a bit of commentary and anecdotes from Neil Peart, who is a very private, guarded person.

Highly recommended for Rush fans.

 

I kid a lot, but I am not a Rush hater. I'm not an avid fan, but I like some of their music and respect their muscianship.
And I just like music documentaries.

 

Gretchen Mol is amazing in that movie.

 

Got to a matinee of "The King's Speech" before the game yesterday.
Serious and funny; relevant and irreverent; historical; fantastic.
We were surprised to see so many "Harry Potter" actors in this movie as well: Featuring, as Sir Winston Churchill, Wormtail.