Last movie you watched......

Yeah, that movie sucked but nowhere near as much as you're saying it sucked.

Just off the top of my head I can list several movies that sucked worse: The Blair Witch Project, just about any horror movie in the past three years that went to theaters, The Brave One, Flightplan, 88 Minutes, Bridget Jones' Diary, The Brothers Grimm, Dan In Real Life, Ghost Rider, Hulk (2003), Lemony Snicket: Unfortunate Events, The Mummy 3, The Number 23, Rocky V, Street Kings, Underworld, Underworld 2, Underworld 3, Babel, Beerfest, and Bewitched.

And that's just off the top of my head.

 

Philadelphia was on TCM last night again. Watched the last half. Struck by how many directorial flourishes Johnathan Demme employed. Very curiously shot film. It works, though. Feels like a Sidney Lumet picture, not sure why.

Watched The Wind That Shakes the Barley again. Highly recommend it. Asks some tough questions about terrorism, self-defense, and the line between revolution and anarchy. Very unpretentious. If you haven't, take a few hours.

 

Graysmith heavily consulted with Vanderbilt's script and Fincher's direction.

The movie's a little...staid for my taste. Too precise. Fight Club and Seven are messy films, but they color outside the lines in the right way.

 

I could talk for hours about this film, which I found highly disturbing and ultimately unfulfilling, based in part on Todd Field's direction and at least partially on the fact that anyone who considers Kate Winslet "plain" for a half-second is a fool. Winslet's one of the industry's great beauties, and to cast her in an "unpretty" role doesn't jibe with one's natural perception of her. You don't just take makeup off of someone and suddenly she becomes uncute. She looks like Kate Winslet.

Anyway, the ending involves the pedophile self-castrating himself just as the former cop confront him in the park. In the book, the pedophile does not such thing; he merely admits what he did and fully expects to go back to jail.

Both Perrotta's book and the movie make predictable, cynical choices, IMO.

 

Not many homes in California have basements.

That scene alone makes it a great movie.

I need to buy that movie.

 

Little Children is one of my favorite movies of the last 5-10 years. And yes, the bloody scene is a WTF? moment, but he promised his mommy that he would behave, or something like that.

 

The ending, while bloody, didn't bother me any after the note from his mother telling him to be a good boy. I also haven't read the book.

I didn't really care for the movie. Like Alma said, Kate Winslett is simply not plain. Not even a bad hair cut and dowdy clothes can disguise that.

 

I wasn't so much grossed out by the scene. They don't show much of the "self-surgery" and leave it up to your imagination to figure out why the rogue ex-cop is freaked out. It's just one of those things you don't see coming.

I'm not sure I buy into the "plain" housewife motif. I just see Winslett as a hot mom who's become bored with her cliche life.

 

But she was supposed to be "plain" and intimidated by Jennifer Connelly's beauty.
That was a big part of the book, and it was there in the film Winslett's character stakes out the house.
I thought the casting was a reach in that regard, also. It did strain credibility.
If you did a poll on this website -- your pick, Connelly or Winslet -- that Winslet would stand half a chance of winning.

 

I didn't read the book and can't speak to how book and movie did/didn't match up in terms of character descriptions.

Re: poll on Connelly or Winslet ... what are the parameters? Just physical beauty?

 

All of the publicity from the movie described Winslett's character as plain.

 

But can't a plain woman still be sexy?