Tuesday
Jul022013
What movie...
Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 12:33AM ... Is on your mind right now. Tell us! (And how did it get there?)
Tuesday, July 2, 2013 at 12:33AM 
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Reader Comments (38)
Bridesmaids! My sister suggested we watch it so we did and I can't stop thinking about how consistently hilarious it is. The best comedy of the new decade, in my opinion.
Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. Mostly because I keep hoping you would see it and post something about it soon. ;)
Before Midnight. It is finally showing here and I haven't been able to go see it yet!
Once Were Warriors.
Definitely one of the most amazing films of the 1990s (Top 5). One of the finest lead actress performances ever (best of the decade? It's either this or Anjelica Huston in The Grifters).
And to think that Rena Owen never got another part worthy of her talent ever since, and that Lee Tamahori's films went less and less interesting after this...
For some inexplicable reason, I thought of the final scenes of "Cheri," where Michelle Pfeiffer wordlessly seems to look into her future, and her features calcify into an expression of devastating loss and unspeakable horror as the voiceover informs us that she loses her young lover, her looks, her comfortable life, and everything she values. I also thought of her kick-ass scene in "Dark Shadows" when all hell is breaking loose at the climax, and most female characters would be written or directed to run for the hills. What does Pfeiffer do? She comes down the staircase with a loaded shotgun, and starts going to town.
Michelle Pfeiffer is a freaking goddess.
World War Z. Call it phenomenally low expectations or whatever, but I thought it was easily the best blockbuster of the summer thus far, and came very close to being that most elusive of beasts, the smart, adult-oriented summer movie. Sure, there are some eye rolling moments, but anyone who has watched a season of 24 has learned to take contrivances like that in stride and see the forest for the trees. And I thought the entire Jerusalem sequence was outstanding. Perhaps it'll all fall apart for me on a second viewing, but I was very pleasantly surprised after all the pre-release negative hype of the mostly mixed-trending-negative reviews!
People Like Us (and especially Elizabeth Banks' performance) because my mom was watching it when I got home.
Magic Mike and Spring Breakers, because ma group of friends called me an idiot for loving it,
Berberian Sound Studio. If it's in a theater near you, watch it.
A couple of days ago I went for an incredibly ill-advised Showgirls/Taste of Cherry double feature. Although the experience was so awkward that I half expected to dream up a sequel that night in which Mr. Baadi's fourth driving companion turns out to be Nomi hitchhinking through Iran and she replies to each question by asking if he's hitting on her, staring vacantly into the air or going "I've got WISDOM!", I was still humbled by how amazing Kiarostami's film was. Truly humbling.
The Secret Garden(1993), because I've always loved it, but more specifically because I was at Filmpark Babelsberg near Berlin on Saturday, and in one section they have a small screen where you can view six photo galleries dedicated to the set decoration of one particular film, and one of these six was about The Secret Garden. It was the only of the films there that I had seen and quite a surprise.
"Man of Steel" because I saw it for the first time last night. Talk about dour and colorless (both literally and figuratively). Henry Cavill has all the personality of a ballpoint pin, not that the script (which borrrows too flagrantly from "The Matrix") and direction did him any favors. And is it only me, or is he too freakishly muscular a Superman? It was a tad disconcerting.
Stories We Tell. My family saw it last night and I had a discussion with my dad regarding Sarah Polley's decision to refrain from directly commenting on the narrative. He thought it was strange and off-putting, I thought the way she constructed the film was her subtle way of commenting throughout.
Death Becomes Her. The quote: "NOW a warning?" came up one way or ther other.
Moonstruck was on HBO last night. And then the fiance and I were quoting it to each other. And then there was a whole conversation about redecorating because there's no room in her den for us to watch together and it was late and we didn't want to decamp to the living room. So she watched alone and I went to bed right after "A BRIDE WITHOUT A HEAD! A WOLF WITHOUT A FOOT!"
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman! I had read that Truffaut thought Ava Gardner to be the most beautiful woman to have ever graced the planet in this movie. I watched it last night, and he wasn't lying.
Fried Green Tomatoes. It was the final film in my "See all the Best Acting Nominees of the '90s" marathon that I've been sludging through the past few months. I was averse to watching it, hence why I put it off so long. It was fine, but there's no reason Jessica Tandy should've been nominated. She was sleepwalking her way through it, as she did in much of her later work (sorry!). But still, I'm proud to have no seen all the acting nominees from 1990-2013. Now on to the '80s...
The Heiress. I discovered that yesterday was Olivia de Havilland's 97th birthday and just finished watching it to celebrate.
So good and while I was watching the thought ran through my mind that it would be a great film for a Hit Me With Your Best Shot entry. The cinematography is so great as well as the performances.
about how EW's 100 Greatest Films lack personality and focus.. but somewhat decent, regardless
PRIVATE RESORT and the reason why it's in my head is because of Andrew Dice Clay. He's appearing in BLUE JASMINE and he was pretty hot in RESORT, so both his new movie and this vintage gem where he's you know--hot, are in my thoughts.
Mikadzuki- Thank you for making my morning at work that much better. Hilarious!
The Kids Are All Right - just watched it for the 2nd time after seeing it when it was in theaters. Still just as enjoyable, and still makes me want to move to California even though I doubt I could afford the amazing houses with amazing views those characters have.
And while I love Ruffalo and Bening in it (so glad she was nominated, since it's such a clean, crisp, unfussy performance, and ugh, that dinner table scene with the singing...), but I'm still a little confused by Moore. I'm just not sure exactly what she was doing in that movie. I can't tell if she was looking down on her character since she's the flighty, irresponsible one in the relationship. She always seemed so slumped and dazed - had their relationship exhausted her? Was she just not engaged in her life?
Yeah, so that's what is on my mind.
Frances Ha - which I finally saw last night, and is the freshest superhero origin story I've ever seen.
ANNA NICOLE on Lifetime..
How nice to see Virginia Madsen, Cary Elwes and Martin Landau again.
Broken Embraces, because of the Pedro Posterized post. It didn't make my Top 5, but it was close, mainly because of Cruz' performance. She fully inhabits four (or five) aspects of her character(s), and her work is flawless. She's a great movie star in Volver, but a great actress in Broken Embraces. Underrated film and performance.
Happiness. I watched it for the first time two weeks ago, and thought it was amazing. In my opinion, Dylan Baker should have been nominated for an Oscar for his performance. It had great performances by Jane Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman, also.
I watched The Amazing Spider-Man (dull) and Green Lantern (awful) because the boyfriend wanted to see manflesh I guess.
We also watched Connie & Carla and it is bad as well, and yet, I was amazed at Toni Colette. She really was able to give a moving performance underneath the ridiculous (but fun) makeup and costumes. And, forgive me for saying it, but I think her voice is really world class level. Yes, I said it.
I'd love to see her play a movie about a "not perfectly great looking" woman trying to make it in the world of Broadway and concerts. A blend of Judy in A Star is Born and Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.
Love is All You Need, because it was about hope and optimism for the future in face of adversity. And because Pierce Brosnan's daughter just died of the same disease that killed his first wife.
TCM held a Neil Simon evening last night, and they played The Goodbye Girl. It's astonishing to me how well this movie holds up after multiple viewings. Mason and Dreyfuss have such mad love/hate chemistry, some of the best I've ever seen in a romantic comedy. Of course as we all know, he won an Oscar--a rarity for film comedy to net a Best Actor prize. But Marsha more than holds her own. Her navigating of the seductive comic rhythms in Simon's script as she adds her own emotional beats is marvelous to behold. The scene where it finally dawns on her that she's lost herself--wrenching. Just one of the moments she displays a powerful intuitiveness with both character and story. My runner-up that year for the Oscar, just behind Diane Keaton in Annie Hall.
Elysium and Gravity. Equally occupying far too much of my day to day thought process at the moment.
I caught bits of The Sunshine Boys on TCM last night and desperately wished I could stick around to watch more. George Burns and Walter Matthau have such fantastic comedic timing in that old school Vaudevillian way. Also, it's probably the only movie in existence where Walter Matthau is in age makeup, considering the man was born looking 60 years old.
Anne, this is one of my favorite Matthau performances. He really brings out the bittersweet quality of the character amid razor-sharp comic timing.
Dave -- totally agree on Toni Collette's voice. I still think (probably weekly!) about how great she was in musical theater on Broadway "The Wild Party!" and how badly i wished she could've done that as a movie so i could've watched it repeatedly.
The Nolan Batman Movies:
I sort of wish Nolan wasn't so...dismissive of the whole Robin concept (or the fantastical elements of the Batman series in general) and that he, maybe, should have taken a step back and said "y'know, I planned a trilogy, but with what's come out since I last stepped into this series shoes...important things have happened."
What happened that I think he should have stepped out of the role of "Batman film director"
1. The Batman Arkham Games. I understand being scared off the fantastical elements because "there's no basis for how they could be taken seriously in an approximation of live-action" (after all, Batman and Robin, which started trying to broach those aspects, was a disaster) and due to it not fitting "Nolan's artistic style." However, Arkham Asylum was released right after The Dark Knight, and it showed something closer to how the fantastical elements could work in an approximation of live-action (Poison Ivy and Killer Croc in Asylum and Clayface and Mr. Freeze in the yet to be released Arkham City)
2. Kick-Ass. Seriously: As much as I know Kick-Ass has some problems (B+, personally, though some don't like it that much), it at least shows that the Robin or Batgirl concepts (and I seriously thought Nolan might actually have been angling on Batgirl to some capacity, if only due to how, in The Dark Knight, he regularly visually obscured the face of Gordon's second child, presumably a daughter, so that we had no concept of her face and, thus, he could cast ANYONE (let's say between 13-16 years old) he wanted after his eight year jump) could work, as is, with NO adjustments for age or anything, like the one in the Adam West show who's at the "I'm just about to leave for the Teen Titans" stage (I can at least say Burt Ward LOOKS young enough for that in the old school Batman TV show) or the "I'm bleeping 25 and look 20 at youngest, mother bleepers" of Chris O'Donnell in Batman Forever. So, yeah, I'm saying: Give us an eleven-thirteen year-old as Robin if you want to show him starting out. Maybe not with his (rightfully infamous) original costume (seriously, the "Batman is gay" jokes are not out of place with that costume in the mix), but at least make him the right age. If Warner Bros., as a studio, refuses to do that, have him be established as a very experienced Robin (5 years in the job or more) and don't even act out his origin.
Before... series by Linklater. It is an almost impossible series, with so low budget and such intimate subject matter. How lucky are we!
Before Midnight is opening in my city (İstanbul / Turkey) in two weeks time so I will be seeing it for the second time quite soon. (First one was in April, in the İstanbul Film Festival)
Dave -- but Green Lantern doesn't even provide that with that stupid CGI suit.
Toni so needs to find a John Cameron Mitchell type who will create a micro-budget musical movie for her to show off her amazing acting AND singing abilities. Surely in Australia they are aware of her gifts? I can picture her now in a campervan doing the cabaret circuit in the Australia outback while, what, searching for her former aboriginal foster sister? Why not?
As for Green Lantern, what is the point of casting Ryan Reynolds if you're going to keep him all covered up in bad CGI? It was worse than Thor that way, hence my one word review of "awful." ;-)
Before Midnight, because I saw it a month ago and am dying to see it again and haven't gotten the chance to.