Last movie you watched......

Saw preview for this Sunday and added it to my que.
Glad you liked it. I don't like Carrell.


Saw WWZ ... I liked it. I hadn't read the book and had no preconceived notions about the movie. Nothing close to an all-timer or cult classic, but not a bad way to kill two hours.

 

Ugh, I hated 'The Way, Way Back.'

 

Fruitvale Station - Well-acted, beautifully shot. Can understand why it got all the kudos. Actually enjoyed it but the screenplay is like an R-rated afterschool special.

The Fault in Our Stars - Not even a good movie in a lot of ways but the two leads are just so effing charming I completely bought into it.

 

Carell as a philandering jock type was a little bit of a tough sell for me, but overall I enjoyed the movie. Engaging characters and enough funny moments to keep it interesting.

 

1990-2002 or so was terrific. You had great artists more or less coming out of the fog of a decade of drug/alcohol abuse mixing with great artists on the front end of their drug/alcohol abuse. The music scene didn't hurt. Miramax did a lot of good (even if its founders were and still are tyrants). You also had a liberal bent in personal values mixed with the blood-drenched violence of the 1980s.

Aside from 2007, we're in a low tide right now. Very low. Too many comic books/toy movies. I'm ready for them to end.

 

Lee had a great team for most of his films. Probably the best casting director (Avy Kaufman). And writer/producer James Schamus, who's nothing short of brilliant. Naturally, Schamus was booted from Focus Films after he brought Dallas Buyers Club to life.

The Ice Storm is a casting dream.

 

Watched "Last Vegas" on Friday night and laughed my ass off. Really enjoyed it. Freeman, Douglas, DeNiro and Kline had great chemistry and I thought it was well written. The jokes were "earned," not cheap laughs.

I also thought the audience was largely able to empathize and laugh with the characters, not at them. I expected a lot more feeble old man jokes and was pleasantly surprised at how the characters were not portrayed that way.

 

Watched the Godfather trilogy over the weekend.

Still amazing to watch the whole thing come together.

 

Oscar winner for best foreign film - The Great Beauty. Lovely and beautiful to watch, but takes patience to get through it. The first 10 minutes make no sense in the grand scheme of the film, but after that it becomes very enjoyable, but it's also a very depressing movie.

 

Double Feature: All is Lost and Captain Phillips. All is Lost grabs you in the first minute. I found myself wondering about Redford's backstory throughout, just tremendous filmmaking.

I enjoy all of Paul Greengrass's films so Capt. Phillips was an easy sell. Especially liked the ending (when Phillips is being checked out in the med center) - some would go for the Top Gun-style "whoop-whoop" - glad they played it straight.

 

Tom Hanks has never been as emotionally naked as in the final five minutes of "Captain Phillips." It's a powerful catharsis after the harrowing ordeal with the Somali pirates, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it was unscripted and improvised with the actual medic on duty in the infirmary (Danielle Albert).

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/tom-hanks-and-paul-greengrass-talk-final-scene-from-captain-phillips

 

There's Fault in Our Stars is good, but very predictable.

A Million Ways to Die in the West is pretty dreadful.