I need to see this bloody movie.
You got all kinds of learnin' and you made me look the fool without tryin', and yet here I am with a gun to your head. That's 'cause I got people with me. People who trust each other, who do for each other, and ain't always lookin' for the advantage.
Mal ,'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
Buffista Movies 4: Straight to Video
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
erikaj - Nov 13, 2005 9:09:55 am PST #8667 of 10002
Always Anti-fascist!
Gris - Nov 13, 2005 10:36:42 am PST #8668 of 10002
Hey. New board.
Early reviews of Harry Potter are good - metacritic scales them to a 100 from The Hollywood Reporter and a 90 from Variety.
Jessica - Nov 13, 2005 12:09:32 pm PST #8669 of 10002
And then Ortus came and said "It's Ortin' time" and they all Orted off into the sunset
Eh, I thought it was only okay.
Far too episodic, with very little background texture and zero emotional arc for Harry (or anyone else).
Granted, it's a huge and massively plotty book, and streamlining it for the screen couldn't have been easy, but they essentially stripped away everything that gives the book interest, leaving only set pieces. Even at nearly 3 hours, it felt rushed because so little happened in-between the major action scenes. It felt like just slogging through events, rather than a smoothly flowing narrative.
Newell also isn't even remotely able to get as good performances out of the kids as Cuarón did. Radcliffe in particular is in over his head in several scenes, which hurts the climactic scenes immensely.
Scrappy - Nov 13, 2005 1:00:15 pm PST #8670 of 10002
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Jarhead last night. Enjoyed them both. Kiss is all about nothing except how clever Shane Black is, but since he is pretty clever and Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. are having so much fun, it's a good watch. Jarhead is a bit too long, but gorgeous to watch and not a bad perfromance in it. It is interesting to see a war movie that is not about war at all but is about what the condition of being a soldier is and what that does to you.
§ ita § - Nov 13, 2005 1:05:50 pm PST #8671 of 10002
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
I read soldierly responses to Jarhead that said that it wasn't really about the condition and effect of being a soldier.
Scrappy - Nov 13, 2005 1:21:45 pm PST #8672 of 10002
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
I can see that--everyone's experience of war is singular in some way. And the film is filtered through the lens of the hyper-aware, analytical and poetic eyes of Tony Swofford.
§ ita § - Nov 13, 2005 1:26:19 pm PST #8673 of 10002
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
Nah, they were just saying that it wasn't like that. Not that their situations weren't like that, but that it rang false as a whole.
Scrappy - Nov 13, 2005 1:27:38 pm PST #8674 of 10002
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
I don't know how closely the film ties to the memoir. I know the book got all sorts of praise from soldiers for its truthfulness, so maybe they tarted it up for the film.
§ ita § - Nov 14, 2005 8:42:37 pm PST #8675 of 10002
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
tommyrot - Nov 16, 2005 2:12:41 pm PST #8676 of 10002
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.
The Times's Manohla Dargis calls the fourth Harry Potter movie a "happily satisfying film adaptation."