Last movie you watched......

I wish it had more scenes like that and less CGI action sequences.

 

Elle Fanning is absolutely going to be a star. Her first rehearsal at the train station sold me on her acting chops and several other scenes only reinforced that.

I really liked the movie. I get what Dick is saying about the kids never being in danger, but that's really no different than The Goonies or E.T. The kids never bite it in the movies, so to use that as a criticism of Super 8 kind of falls flat for me.

My only gripe with the movie is why was the creature was stealing all the power sources if he was just going to get back his cubes to create the ship anyway. Did they power the cubes? Because all the appliances appear to have been left behind, so I didn't really get what one had to do with the other.

But the rest of it was so entertaining, I'm not going to get worked up over the science behind an alien being's spacecraft.

 

Yeah, the kid problem is just an almost insurmountable obstacle when you make this kind of movie. I don't think it quite made up for it with the relationship tension.

The details of the plot you talk about here felt so extraneous. Kind of just shoved in there to give it some sort of plot. Until you brought them up again, I had forgotten about all of those ominous Rubick's Cubes.

 

'Hugo' was long and boring. The 3D added very little. Far too much exposition for little payoff. Sasha Baron Cohen was very good, as was Ben Kingsley. But it seemed to be missing a component, missing some magic.

 

I watched "Crazy, Stupid Love" last night and really enjoyed it. Excellent performances all around from Gosling, Emma Stone, Carell and Julianne Moore, as well as some other supporting actors (Marissa Tomei was a riot).

It was funny, had some heart to it and had an ending I didn't see coming that I thought played out well. I definitely recommend it.

 

It's my favorite movie since Glengarry Glen Ross; definitely my favorite movie of this century.

 

"The Adventures of Tintin."

Never read the Hermes comics; never even heard of them, but Spielberg's movie was fantastic.

One scene dragged to me: the chasing-the-hawk-scene as the dam broke. (It also kind of bothered me that the set-in-Morocco port scene was made to look like Ourzazete, but Oz isn't on a port, but I can't imagine anyone else caring...)

The plot -- even the role of the opera singer -- was pretty predictable to me, too. But it was still very enjoyable.

The CGI was freaky amazing. I had read the quote "They look like real people, but real Hermes people" and didn't fully understand it until I saw the film. It's a cartoon, but honest, they look realistic -- except the big noses. The dog looks a bit fake, though.

I have absolutely no understand of how CGI works. So far as I'm concerned, it's magic.

 

KJIM -- IIRC, you are not in the States?

I don't believe it's available anywhere here yet, although I think it's recently become one of the biggest selling movies of all time in France. Can't wait to see it.

 

The sequence where Ryan Gosling gives Steve Carrell's character a style makeover should be required viewing for sports writers.

"You're better than The Gap!"

(Note: I'm wearing Gap jeans right now.)

The theme of giving up on yourself to the point that your partner does the same is poignant. My wife's parents split when she was a toddler because he had an affair. That's almost unforgivable, but my wife has always recognized that her mother has made no effort to look nice or better herself in any way for probably the last forty years. He handled it wrong, but she played a role. That stuff can have an effect, and I liked the way the movie dealt with it in being very unjudgmental.

 

I liked most of the movie, but as has been discussed previously on this board, that scene at graduation with the kid giving the speech was horrendous. Let's just randomly have the kid explain what we feel the point of the movie is in case the audience is too dumb to comprehend for themselves. Great idea.

Also, there were two directors and it felt like it had two directors. There were some uneven scenes that didn't mesh well with each other.

 

Yeah, I agree that the end was way too on-the-nose. I thought, like you get at, it was a movie with some bits and pieces that worked well but overall less than the sum of its parts. Very reminiscent of "Super 8" as far as that goes.

 

Good point. Unfortunately, the audience probably is too dumb to get the point without it.

And Dick, I, too, enjoyed "You're better than the Gap" particularly because I was wearing a Gap shirt and khakis as I watched it. The funny part is that I have been recently trying to improve my wardrobe to be "better than the Gap."

Gosling was just awesome. I frickin' love that dude. He's an excellent actor.