Mal ,'Ariel'
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.
Hey, I just saw last year's winner this weekend. I am appalled that Tommy Lee Jones didn't get anything for his performance in No Country for Old Men, but he's more of a blue-collar actor than Daniel Day Lewis, I guess.
NC4OM mostly made me the opposite of homesick. They absolutely nailed the environment I grew up in, and it made me really happy to be a fat soft middle-class suburbanite now.
Raq, have you seen The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada? Also very good.
Thanks for the rec! Just added to my q.
R and I are doing the modern-day equivalent of couples' therapy: We are simultaneously going thru Netflix rating movies, each on our own account.
"Ooo! Five stars!"
"No way. I'm not even going to RATE that thing."
"Huh. This one was okay."
"Yeah. Another three star."
"Oh god I hated that piece of crap."
"Really? I gave it four."
New Yorker Films is shut down and its films are being sold off: [link]
I wasn't crazy about The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. It had a few things going for it (Levon Helm's character, for instance), but the story seemed unnecessarily convoluted (and that means a lot coming from me) and I never believed for a second in either Tommy Lee Jones's character or what's-his-face, the twitchy guy who played the border patrol agent. I know Jones was wanting to make a Peckinpah movie - I'm pretty sure I read that Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia was one of his primary influences - but he did the movie wrong by hiring Guillermo Arriaga to write it. That guy overwrites everything he's done: Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel. The location shots at Big Bend were awful purty, though.
Ooh. Criterion is putting out WISE BLOOD in May. Can't wait.
Excellent! One of Brad Dourif's finest moments. Maybe they'll get around to putting out The Dead soon, too.
Has anyone seen the new Clive Owen thriller, International? It's getting lukewarm (although not excoriating) reviews, but the presence of Owen goes a long way to mitigate a mediocre script.
What's with all the "I" titles and political thrillers anyway? The Insider. The Interpreter. International. I'm sure I'd forgotten some.
Owen's also shot a movie with Julia Roberts called Duplicity, where they're playing spies/ex-lovers bent on out-scamming each other, which looks like it might be frothy fun, unless you hate JR with the death of thousand burning supernovas.
Has anyone seen the new Clive Owen thriller, International?
I saw it and I'd say the reviews are about right. I liked the first two thirds of the movie, but then it lost me with all the exposition and nonsensical narrative, which kinda pissed me off because I was enjoying myself up to that point.
I guess you could summarize it as Bourne Lite. Visually, it's very pretty with the different locales.
Owen's also shot a movie with Julia Roberts called Duplicity, where they're playing spies/ex-lovers bent on out-scamming each other, which looks like it might be frothy fun, unless you hate JR with the death of thousand burning supernovas.
It'll be like Mr. & Mrs. Smith only without the pesky dithering about which one you want to win!