Last movie you watched......

It's made $132 million in foreign markets, so it's at $184 million total...

It's that way with a lot of action films that don't do as well in the US, but do well worldwide...

Jack Reacher - $213 million total

 

On the topic of voice overs, I finally watched 'Man with the Iron Fists' Sunday morning.
I love kung fu movies.
That movie is terrible.

 

You're just trying to get in good with Jennifer Aniston.

 

Saw Argo with the family Sat. night and really enjoyed it. Very nice job of capturing the suspense. Whether true or not, its a film. Its up to the audience to believe or not to believe. Come on people, you are there to get lost in a story, not get your history facts. You want history? Open a book or do some internet research.

 

For the most part, Mrs. Buck does not watch the kung fu movies with me. She's not much of a fan.
Once in a qhile she'll start to watch one, but she usually loses interest within about 20 minutes.

 

Saw two movies on my flight the other day (they were both free). End Of Watch was excellent, loved the chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. They were both very good, Pena is sorely underrated.

Bourne Legacy was pretty good. I am a huge fan of Renner, his character was good and he played it well but it wasn't as good as any of the Matt Damon films.

 

Seeing the movie spurred me to research the hostage crisis and look for books on it. This stuff happened just a few months before I was born, so I didn't know much about it. While some stuff was changed for the sake of story, I still found it fascinating that the basic premise was real. It just seems too crazy to be real.

 

"Moonrise Kingdom." I've seen a couple of other Wes Anderson films so I expected to movie to be, at times, a little to quirky for its own good, and it was. However, I did like the two young leads, and the adult cast was as good as you'd expect. Eventually, the story hooked me in, and I was interested in how it would all turn out. Oh, and my favorite part was actually Schwartzman doing his thing as Cousin Ben. Overall, a thumbs up for me.

PS: I also liked the Shawshank reference at the start of the movie, when they found the hole under the poster in Sam's tent.

 

I don't think it's that simple.
I'm not saying the production carries the same burden for accuracy as Capote in the nonfiction novel, as per another conversation.

But I look at a few issues with movies based on real events.

1. The average person takes the movie as true at face value. I've read it here from people you'd expect to know better. Someone sees a movie like 'Margin Call' and thinks he/she understands the financial crisis. This inherently bothers me.

B. You're telling people it's true. I liked 'The Strangers,' which was marketed as 'based on true events,' but it's not true and that bothers me. If you're telling people it's true, no matter how you couch, you assume a burden for a level of truth. Although I'm not sure where that level is. If someone made 'Flying Leathernecks' today, they'd call it based on true events because WWII was real and there were Marine Corps pilots.

iii. How much is real and how much is fiction? 'Argo' in its essence is fiction. There was a hostage crisis in Iran; some Americans escaped and found refuge with a Canadian diplomat; the cover story to get them out was a movie production. However, every element that makes it work as a movie is fiction. To use 'The Strangers' example, you've aggregated elements from various crimes and melded them together into a fiction. Nothing wrong with that, but to present it as 'true' is dishonest. 'The Strangers' is as true as 'Silence of the Lambs.'

'Argo' was a good movie. I enjoyed it. However, marketing it as 'true' was dishonest.

 

"Fargo" was a true story. It is portrayed exactly as it occurred. Out of respect for the dead.

 

"For a Good Time, Call."

Cute idea. Poor execution. Stock characters and ultimately overreliant on vulgar humor that wasn't very funny or clever. I definitely like Ari Graynor more in the best friend or sister role she almost always plays in her movies. But maybe she grows from here.

 

Amour. The most difficult love story to watch ever.