Riley ,'Sleeper'
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.
You weren't there, were you, amych??
I was not. Are you sure you weren't in my nerd-loft?
I'm not a Red Balloon fan, probably because my main association with it is "that stupid thing we had to watch every single time there was a sub in French class for all of middle school and high school."
I was not. Are you sure you weren't in my nerd-loft?
Pretty sure.
I saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants II tonight. It was mostly disappointing. The first movie lived pretty comfortably in what I like to call "good cheesy" - it used pretty orchestrations, gorgeous beaches, beautiful sunsets, emotionally fraught dialogue, and Amber Tamblyn's cry-face to good dramatic effect. The second movie has lots of all of these things, but they are very rarely used in drametically interesting ways. Basically, the writing kinda stinks, and the schmaltzy directing tries WAY to hard to capture the emotional resonance of the first film, and instead becomes over-the-top enough that our whole audience was laughing during the "sad" scenes.
As a big plus in the plus column, though, Amber Tamblyn is allowed to be funny a lot. And that girl is stinking hilarious. She wins this movie.
Man, some people don't like things. I just watched The Quiet, and while it had its problems (like Edie Falco's terrible hair), I thought it was a good, atmospheric psychological thriller, as they say. With two pretty ladies. Solid B at the very least. Maybe B- for not being totally cohesive. But it got a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I agree P-C. We enjoyed The Quiet. Also, Camilla Belle is ridiculously gorgeous.
She is very nice to look at, I agree. Even though she was only allowed to have, like, one expression for the entire movie.
(I...kind of want to see When a Stranger Calls more now? I should have watched it when it was on OnDemand a while ago. For kicks.)
I was looking over some reviews, and a few called it "darkly comic," so I'm a little glad that some of the things—like Shawn Ashmore's ridiculous dialogue—were supposed to be funny? Maybe? It didn't seem like it was supposed to be funny most of the time. It was very somber.
I'm just surprised it scored so low on RT. I mean, 22% is for really awful shit like Scooby-Doo. This movie is totally better than Scooby-Doo ! Come on now.
We're showing American Teen at my theatre and after reading the comments on imdb and Alexandra Dupont's review on AICN I have no idea what to tell guests who ask about it. It's getting great reviews from the critics but I think I agree with Alexandra when she says it's basically just another reality TV show- totally manipulated.
I finally saw TDK (with Amyth and Smonster). Eh. Liked it, didn't love it. I'll come down on the side of those who found it too long. By the end I'd totally fallen out of any emotional engagement and was sitting there thinking about the special effects and makeup, and considering whether the director had achieved what he was going for thematically. As Brecht wasn't involved with the production, I'm thinking this isn't what the makers intended.
saw Pineapple express last night. Mucho fun. James Franco is adorable and so freaking funny. The film kinda falls apart in the last half-hour, but it's a great ride up until then.
I watched Sunshine last night. I have to agree with everyone else that it's good until it stops being good.