1969? At least I was talking about the "Current Age"... wow, really?? I gotta check that out lol

OK more recent for you senior, how about Alyssa Milano. Does her being a kid actor in COMMANDO stop you from enjoying the fact that as a grown woman, she's hot?

I'm surprised you didn't mention Anna Paquin in THE PIANO -- but I don't know the film as much as I adore Paquin (now, as she's an adult)!!

I know what you mean, and you know what I mean....

The Avengers.

I best know Whedon as director/creator of Serenity/Firefly. He brings some of that trademark humor to The Avengers. Look, this is an enjoyable film but it's not by any means one that is plot driven. It's a summer extravaganza flick and must be understood and enjoyed on that level. It is also as good an example as any just why American made films dominate the domestic and international marketplace. They're entertaining. It really is that simple. If you make quality movies and have good people marketing them you can do well. That said, as Disney's failed turkey John Carter shows, no one knows ahead of time just what any one particular film will do. But The Avengers is breaking box office records and will likely continue to do so.


So, what kind of movie is it? Comic book movies do tend to skew male and young just as comic book readers do. The Avengers is not that different in that regard. However there are "realistic" (to the extent that you can talk about realistic anything in a comic book film) female characters who are not sexpots nor are they just there to be rescued by male characters. You simply don't do the kind of business this movie has done just by appealing to boys. The movie runs a tad long at roughly 2 hours and 22 minutes but I don't think it's all that noticeable.

This is definitely the most entertaining film I've seen this year and one that is worth seeing on the big screen. There's lot of humorous banter among the team members, SFX are superb and Ruffalo makes you forget about previous Bruce Banners.

Eden Lake from 2008. It's sort of a thriller. I watched it because it had a good rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Michael Fassbender (who I think is a great actor) is in it. Great movie. Very suspenseful. The ending has caused a lot of debate. It's one of those films that sticks in your gut for a while.

It's not plot driven as much as storytelling-driven. Big difference. People reguarly confuse the two, but I would complain that many movies suffer from having too much plot at times. (Depp's PIRATES movies immediately come to mind. Jesus they're overcomplicated.)

What do I mean exactly? AVENGERS as a movie plot is very streamlined, almost this side of an excellent saturday morning episode if stretched to 2+ hours. Whedon was able to sport what, 10 or so major characters and nobody gets slighted? Everybody has their moment and nobody come off as rather useless, not even a guy who brought a bow & arrow to an alien gunfight. The alien invasion is a generic plot device, but that's not a flaw since their leader does all the work as their spokesman.

Because Marvel already did several "solo" movies culminating together into these Nerd Olympics, they got the origins stories already disposed of so you don't have to bother with that bullshit again. And yet the remarkable thing is, you don't necessarily need to have seen them to enjoy THE AVENGERS. Even though I would argue that it adds to the experience. (Think of them as foreplay.)

Consider Whedon's clever writing in regards Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo being BFFs. If you saw those pictures, it makes logical sense. But without those movies, you absolutely buy that connection because of their great chemistry together. Two scientists (if completely different personalities) bond over their private well-founded reasons for distrusting the government/military. Not to mention nobody else around them "gets" their technobabble.

It rather reminds me of comic books in the pre-digital days when characters would make references to a previous adventure or villain, and this passage would be marked with a big black "*". The characters won't go into detail explaining that background (i.e. plot), but at the bottom of the page would say "*=As seen in Amazing Spider-Man #337!" or something of that ilk. You don't need to know the specifics to enjoy that current issue, but hey if you want to know the specifics you're given a reference point to check the backissues.

In that regard, Marvel has done that with their controlled properties. For AVENGERS, you don't need to more than that Captain America is a soldier stuck out of time or that Thor is an alien demigod (and his brother's an asshole) or that Iron Man is a smartass, etc. If you didn't already know the backstories, well you have their movies to go rent.

(Well except for Black Widow and Hawkeye, but I suppose that'll be remedied with a SHIELD movie. It could even be Marvel's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, a spy thriller set in a superhero world.)



AVENGERS has gotten much heavier female traffic than such comic book adaptations tend to draw, and even considerable repeat business with them. It's rather popular too with folks who've never read a single Marvel comic (much less seen the other movies) or even know what a SHIELD is.

As summer spectacle entertainment, it's top flight. Good cast, good action, good SFX, friendly to imagination and intelligence (broadly) instead of insulting either as Michael Bay tends to do with his stupid crap. But you want to know what I think the secret recipe for this billion-dollar hit is? The humor. My audience was cracking up at the appropriate spots and punchlines, including the best smashing scene (literally) in the movie which brought more laughs than the last few comedies I've seen.



Oh I disagree. Storytelling wise, you can tell how Whedon introduces the set-pieces, the audience even anticipating them and their entrances because they're fans or they've seen the ads. Then you see how he sets those pieces into line which pays off with that finale. It takes awhile to get there, but I didn't mind because I thought it was paced very well.

That's another reason for AVENGERS' success. Alot of summer movies in recent years lack that magic of suspenseful anticipation when you the audience are ahead of the characters and know their future destination andencounters, which the characters might be ignorant in the dark about. Way too many movies go autopilot and have the audience/characters share the same knowledge.

(STAR WARS comes to mind as a classic example of that sensation. Empire captures Leia, takes her to the Death Star. The droids escape, land on Tantoine, meet up with Luke Skywalker. He meets Obi-Wan, they meet Han Solo and charter a flight. They don't know it yet until it's too late, but you just know they're gonna end up at the Death Star, kick ass, and save Leia.)

Well I saw Tim Burton's DARK SHADOWS, starring his BFF Johnny Depp and of course based off the cult TV Show. But I'm gravely disapointed to tell you all that it bites. A few laughs*, but a mostly a stiff narrative that bones me by how overall tone deaf the movie was in mixing the thrills with laughs. Was this really the same guy who made BEETLEJUICE? The vampire was too good at sucking, because this movie sucks!

(OK I promise, no more bad puns. I swear it on my sole.)

Remember my rant above? If AVENGERS thankfully had little plot but overfilled with storytelling, DARK SHADOWS unfortunately had little storytelling and overfilled with plotting, coffin up subplot after subplot (enough to occupy a whole franchise) with very little payoff. This is one of those movies which tells us that character A hates or loves character B, instead of showing us why and investing the audience enough to sorta give a shit what happens to whom.

I mean it starts out promising enough, interestingly just like the TV show did: Mysterious woman on a train heading to an ominous mansion owned by a family dynasty on the decline. But once Depp shows up, the movie completely loses focus and really the scripts panics by throwing ideas in quiet desperation. Which is unfortunate because in retrospect, all the elements wrecklessly and cheaply tossed out there (which the movie pathetically tries to unsatisfatory tie up together) maybe could've been nailed down into a coherent, engaging, entertaining, (and simplified) plot. This indeed could've been a decent movie that some folks maybe were expecting from the ads.

You know what this movie really reminds me of? COWBOYS & ALIENS. That one also had a bigass budget, a good cast, a summer release date, lots of pricey SFX, a respectable director at the helm. And like DARK SHADOWS, technically it wasn't a "bad" movie but it's something worse for me: An offensively lazy mediocre picture. At least with real turkeys, you can laugh at them in retrospect like a Nostalgia Critic video or whatever. You don't get that luxuy with these sort of misfires.

The other day, Cracked.com had an article about artists who need to take a break and Tim Burton was ranked. And I have to agree with them. Burton in the past has made movies I've enjoyed whether BATMAN RETURNS or EDWARD SCISSORHANDS or A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (which he produced/co-wrote) and so forth, but now he's stuck like way too many pop star legends who produce work derivative of their greatest hits, but with diminishing artistic returns. In that regard, Burton is alot like a former associate of his in Prince.

You know what I'm talking about with Burton's "greatest hits," and DARK SHADOWS is full of it: Dark gloomy goth-friendly aesthetics that rape and plunder German Expressionism, misfit protagonists (usually monsters) who don't relate well with or tolerated by the normal conservative society, Danny Elfman soundtrack, lots of SFX and CGI, Depp covered in enough pancake makeup to be confused for Queen Elizabeth I, his mate Helena Bonham Carter always in the cast, even Christopher Lee gets a part once he gets stirred up from his tomb.

Easily the worst Depp/Burton collaborated production yet. (Yes, even worse than CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Let that fact sink in.)

*=I'll admit it, I laughed at the hippie scene. But for some reason it's funnier when I think of how Seth McFarlane would've written that sketch. Vampire smokes pot, gets stoned, gets the munchies...

Hell I'm surprised the movie didn't make more of a point where Depp is trying to quit sucking blood by going to an AA meeting. "Hello, I'm Barnabas Collins and I'm here because I have a drinking problem." NYUCK NYUCK!

Exactly. This. The plot is simple and the story is compelling. It just works. It works so well that you look at other films and think why can't that director/producer/actor/writer get it right.


Yes, Stark and Banner play off each other nicely.



PUNY GOD!



Well it was a surprise to me but then again I was only 8 yrs old when I first saw it..

Is Depp basically playing the same character in all of his films?

Same make-up case too, apparently.

Brighton Rock
This noir movie is based on a Graham Greene novel which I have not read. I was actually happy about this as I had no preconceptions about the movie. This adaptation takes place in 1960's Great Britain near and around as you might guess, Brighton. A small time group of hoodlums want some payback for the murder of their boss. A naive, lonely and virginal waitress named Rose (Andrea Riseborough) accidentally gets photographic evidence that could implicate a gang member in a revenge murder. Pinkie (Sam Riley) gets the assignment to obtain and destroy the picture, find out what if anything Rose knows and if necessary, send her to the afterlife. Pinkie is just the person for the job as his vileness and coldness and willingness to kill have already made the other gang members nervous to be around him. Pinkie's boldness and hatred only increase throughout the film as he kills his way to become boss of his gang.

This film is not an action film; it's a drama. And the drama is primarily about the relationship between good and evil or more precisely between Rose and Pinkie.
Rose is quite obviously desperate for someone, anyone to pay attention to her. In a sad, very depressing scene she has to listen as her obviously uncaring (and abusive?) father bargains a fair brideprice for her with the maleficent Pinkie, who intends to marry the underage Rose to forestall any chance of testimony against him. Actually whenever I see Rose, I expect that Eleanor Rigby should be playing. It's a very religious film , not so much in the imagery though there is that but in the conversations between Pinkie and Rose about heaven and hell. Pinkie and Rose are both Catholics.

Pinkie is quite adamant that there is hell but couldn't care less about heaven. He has a way of speaking that constantly belittles Rose and a few times it looks as if he's not above hitting her. At the same time while Rose is enthralled by and deeply in love with Pinkie, Pinkie is fascinated by her, even if that fascination is almost wholly based in contempt.

On the side of the angels is Rose's employer Ida (Helen Mirren-who is still going to be vamping men when she's 70), who as a former "party girl" herself, can recognize the pure evil radiating from Pinkie. One of the men Pinkie killed was an associate of Ida's. Ida basically engages in a struggle to save Rose's life and soul. In this she's advised by her friend Phil (John Hurt) who has never gotten to know Ida in a biblical way and appears to deeply resent it.

Look for current Game of Thrones actor Nonso Anozie as Dallow, a member of Pinkie's gang who starts to realize that Pinkie is not all there. Andy Serkis has a small but important role as Mr. Colleoni, the most powerful gangster in Brighton and a man who intends to keep that distinction. This is a VERY dark noir indeed but it's not very violent. I liked the acting here. I liked this film and thought it was very worthwhile. It throws a few curveballs at the viewer's head and like all good curveballs they don't necessarily break when or where you think they should.

This looks, feels and sounds like a fifties or sixties movie. It doesn't have hyperactive camera work or crushing sound. It assumes that a scene can last for a while and not lose the viewer's interest. The ending will stay with you.

Watched Movies discussion

Harry poter

Batman

Resident Evil

I don't wanna give this piece of shit film more time or energy than it deserves, so about Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) all I will do is repeat my GetGlue/Facebook posting:

"I don't know what the reviewers said, but this drawn-out third-grade implementation of a fifth-grade plot is borderline ridiculous."

C'mon, now... the ENTIRE premise could've been summed up in 15 minutes in a well-made film; I didn't need 1.75 hrs of CGI to "get it".

HOLLYWOOD NEEDS TO STOP fucking up the APES series!! Leave it alone already!!!

How do you watch most blockbusters?



What does that even mean?



Oh please. RISE is practically silver compared to Tim Burton's ill-advised and downright stupid POTA remake.

I actually respect your opinions more than you think. But not this time. IMHO, that was a total piece of shit film! Well, it would've been okay if an hour and a half was taken away, and the "point" was supplanted into a REAL movie... but I think I already said that.

As for your previous feedback on that post...

I LOVE SHITTY MOVIES and will chomp on popcorn with Michael Bay any day of the week! But this wasn't good enough.

What does WHAT mean? It took 1.75 hrs of OBVIOUS (aka distracting) CGI to make a point that a real filmmaker could've made in 15 minutes. The plot/idea was fine -- but it was a 15-minute idea, not an entire feature film idea!

And yes, I really do question which is worse... RISE or POTA... and I'm thinking RISE at this point. But I'd have to watch the POTA remake again to be sure (since I only saw it once years ago, another POS ;))

But for a brief second, let me give you a bit of where I'm coming from. Unlike you, because you weren't born yet, I grew up with this shit -- the originals are sacred. Hell, I even give the old TV series a pass. For nostalgic sake.

But my point remains: HOLLYWOOD NEEDS TO STOP FUCKING AROUND WITH THE APES SERIES ALREADY! Those nimrods can't think of anything new, but can think of plenty of shit to fuck something over.... egads. I used to want to visit Hollywood... not any more, for a long time...

I thought RISE was a decent movie, a somewhat solid throwback to those 50s/60s sci-fi movies which were about ideas and characters, not just an excuse for mindless FX-laden action scenes. Of course RISE does court the one movie scientist trope I sorta despise. You know, the "how dare you play God!" nonsense. But it's not so bad in RISE is only because of James Franco's scenes with his father John Lithgow, which sells that angle.

Of course the movie really cooks when Caesar gets thrown into the zoo and we get a good execution of the ole reliable jailbreak picture. God you should've the crowd at my screening enjoying themselves immensely when the sadistic zookeeper meets his just deserts.

Now if you know your monkey movies, RISE is basically a down to Earth contemporary retread of CONQUEST OF THE APES. I thought Andy Serkis in body mo-cap delivered a wonderful performance from surrogate child to misunderstood teenage victim to revolt leader, up there with his Gollum but arguably more impressive considering he has no dialogue. Isn't it wonderful to be impressed by FX again?

Hell even the climax on the Golden Gate Bridge, which easily could've come off as nonsensically stupid you would find in a Michael Bay movie, works because it's quite compelling and sorta intelligent. (You gotta love that scene of the total gorilla assault on the helicopter.)

RISE has two slight flaws though. One, there is some chaotic editing with characters and subplots introduced and then forgotten. Usually this is a good sign that this was heavily recut in post-production. (Well they did a good job in the editing bay.)

Two, well the ending itself.



But otherwise, a likeable Hollywood popcorn sci-fi thriller that doesn't insult your IQ or imagination unlike say BATTLESHIP.

(Also the title is bullshit. It was scripted, shot, and presented to Fox as RISE OF THE APES. That's an awesome, simple title full of power. The Marketing department shoehorned the RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES to directly tie itself into that film franchise. To be fair looking at it's box-office totals, I guess it worked in spite of that mouthful.)

Okay. I got thru about half (at most) of Inglourius Bastards, then opted for The Breakup. I thought IG was going to be a The Dirty Dozen Type movie. What in the world was it with all that dialogue? Madonne!

Quentin Tarantino.

Just saw "The Grey" OnDemand with Liam Neeson... over all a good intense survival type movie but the ending (KIND OF A SPOILER ALERT!)...
Don't read past this - You've been warned!






(... the movie's ending was very similar to The Sopranos series ending.)

Did the car ever get parked?

I am anxious to see "The Grey." I saw your post Mark, and when I saw spoiler alert, I immediately scrolled down. Didn't know if you had the ending in view or not but I for one, don't want to know how it ends.

Anyway, I saw "Unknown" & "Taken" with Liam Nesson and really liked both of them. I read with "The Grey" not to leave til credits run and assume it affects the ending.



TIS

No, I don't think so!

He is a very good actor. I enjoyed those films you listed as well, TIS.

Just watched Armand Assante in a really horrible movie (which I am sure went right to video) about a shark attack. It's a shame when really good and successful actors step down to do this type of drivel. Who knows why. I'm sure it wasn't because the role was challenging. Perhaps it's money.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)


Interesting movie. Got good reviews. Sort of reminded me of The Omen in a way. Has Tilda Swinton, who is one of my favorite actresses.

I don't know why some people didn't like the ending to The Grey. It was perfect.

Agree.

Watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes last night. I was disappointed. It was kind of plodding. I expected it to sum up with the apes taking over instead of just the end of their rampage. I guess that leaves room for a sequel-prequel.

I thought CONQUEST already did that?