I know you guys have already discussed this movie a couple of times, but I just watched Apocalypto last night. That was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. There was one moment where Rambo and Arnold in the Predator popped into my head, but only for a second.

Great movie. I'm going to watch it again today before I return it.

Perhaps, yes. It may well be an empty statement on my part.

But appreciating one work from a filmmaker with a unique, individual style can sometimes depend on an overall evaluation of his body. Van Sant's Psycho remake comes to mind.

Somebody might hate Blade Runner, but their knowledge of Ridley Scott's career prior to it and after it would bring, I imagine, little further appreciation to that single film.

At any rate. Greenaway is by now one of my favourite artists.

Glad you enjoyed it Blibble. APOCALYPTO was one of my favorite films of last year and think a lot of people either missed out on it or trashed it solely because of Mel Gibson's past work, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.

This is what I wrote when I saw Apocalypto at the cinema:

Gibson's films are all seemingly based around the notion of life as freedom and death as slavery…or something like that. In order to show what is at stake in terms of freedom, in terms of life, he makes his films as gory as possible, so that when a character dies, he does not leave the world peacefully, but has his heart ripped out by an evil savage. For Apocalypto, Gibson has toned down the slow-motion that killed Passion and is more interested in getting one with events. If the events themselves are ludicrous, and we don't really care for any of these horrid people, then at least it has its moments of noteworthy action (the chase scenes through the forest are wonderful). And the scene in the middle of the movie, at the Mayan temple, shot in large amounts of dusty, sandy yellows and bright reds, with the captives being escorted to the top of the temple itself painted in blue, is absurd, pretty and frightening.

Hey Irish, have you seen Michael Bay's latest suckfest, THE TRANSFORMERS, yet?

I cannot get the following films from my head:

Eraserhead
A Zed & Two Noughts
Vertical Features Remake
Kárhozat
The Brown Bunny

I think the films I'm making at the moment are trying to replicate the multiple complexities these conjure in me.

Tonight my good man. Don't worry, I'll review it. How about yourself?

Not yet, I'm leaving for the Jersey shore in about half an hour, so maybe when I get back.

I call it here first folks.

3-star review from The Irishman!

Irish is gonna like a Michael Bay movie?

You're really going out on a limb with that prediction, Ronnie.

TRANSFORMERS
(First Viewing)

High-school student Sam Witwicky buys his first car, who is actually the Autobot Bumblebee. Bumblebee defends Sam and his girlfriend Mikaela Banes from the Decepticon Barricade, before the other Autobots arrive on Earth. They are searching for the Allspark, and the war on Earth heats up as the Decepticons attack a United States military base in Qatar. Sam and Mikaela are taken by the top-secret agency Sector 7 to help stop the Decepticons, but when they learn the agency also intends to destroy the Autobots, they formulate their own plan to save the world.

I never watched the cartoon growing up so I wasn't pumped up to see this movie until I saw the trailer. Michael Bay more than made up for PEARL HARBOR with this film. The last time I had this much fun at the theaters was when I saw GRINDHOUSE a couple of months ago. Plenty of humor, action and great special FX make this, IMO, the perfect big budget Blockbuster summer film (and yes, that's taking into account LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD). I was never a fan of Shia LaBeouf but he did a great job in this film and he actually made me into a fan. Now I don't dread seeing him in INDIANA JONES IV. The young man can act. Also Bernie Mac had a nice cameo (I LOVE this guy's work) as the man who sells Shia's character his car. Whether you're a fan of the old Transformers cartoons or not, this is a movie to be seen in theaters. It was better than PIRATES 3 and SPIDER-MAN 3, yet unfortunately I don't think it will make as much money as those franchise beasts. I hear there's talk of a TRANSFORMERS 2 for 2009 and all I can say is it won't come soon enough! This is definitely Bay's masterpiece (BAD BOYS is his second best movie). And it is with great pleasure that I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, the Bay is back!

Juuuuusssst a bit outside.

Paragraph breaks please? PLEASE? PLEASE?!?!?!?

Whats funny of you saying its Bay's masterpiece....Bay lost the movie in post-production. Spielberg kicked his ass out, and only 15% of the final cut is what Bay cut himself.

So you call it his masterpiece, if you know any better, I would thank Spielberg and his army of monkey editors at DREAMWORKS.

Besides, GI JOE kicks TRANSFORMERS ass....and knowing is half the battle!

Plus, why is it better than PIRATES 3 or even SPIDERMAN 3?

THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002) - ***1/2

THE PLOT IN CASE YOU'RE TOO DAMN LAZY TO USE IMDB: Matt Damon is found floating in the Meditteranean Sea, suffering amnesia. Turns out he can kick ass for the Lord. Turns out also that some CIA spooks want him dead.

This should have been a generic-as-fuck movie. It really should have been.

I mean, the trailers sure sold it as such. Plus, it had the GOOD WILL HUNTING guy and occasional Ben Affleck butt buddy trying to be an action star. Pfft.

Instead, it became the sleeper hit of that summer, and did insane business on DVD. But why?

Robert Ludlum's novel was Cold War spyfare about a middle-aged guy fighting in divided Europe for his identity. But director Doug Liman and scripter Tony Gilroy re-evaluated the book and the post-Cold War world, and in doing so, they deliver the freshest thriller in spy cinema since the Fall of the Wall.

The devil is in the details. If Brad Pitt had done the film as he was supposed to, before injury forced him to drop out, the film wouldn't have worked as well. We accept Tyler Durden beating up assassins but Matt FUCKING Damon?

And that folks, is why he works so well for the film. Damon isn't a natural born action personality, and we buy his own confusion and fear when by trained instinct, he can become the calmest killing machine alive. Plus, Damon seems of the right age-frame to which he could have been recruited by the CIA and 5 years later after insane training and field work, he would be probably that damn efficient.

Plus, he gives off a sort of innocent charisma thats him an easy person to root for as an underdog against the CIA and its covert army. It explains why Franka Potente would indeed stick with him despite not knowing who he really is, nor if he might easily snap her neck to save himself.

Then there are other details that Hollywood has already been highly influenced by. The hero's own knowledge and automatic reactive measures obviously made a notice on the Bond franchise with CASINO ROYALE, and I bet Doug Liman's own-shot action sequences gave Christopher Nolan the guts to helm BATMAN BEGINS' own 2nd-unit shooting.

OFF-NOTE: Blibble, you triple dog-dared me. You owe me money.

INDEPENDENCE DAY
(Nth Viewing)

On July 2nd, communications systems worldwide are sent into chaos by a strange atmospheric interference. It is soon learned by the military that a number of enormous objects are on a collision course with Earth. At first thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft, piloted by a mysterious alien species. After attempts to communicate with the aliens go nowhere, David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, discovers that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. On July 3rd, the aliens all but obliterate New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. The survivors set out in convoys towards Area 51, a strange government testing ground where it is rumored the military has a captured alien spacecraft of their own. The survivors devise a plan to fight back against the enslaving aliens, and July 4th becomes the day humanity will fight for its freedom. July 4th is their Independence Day.

I know some here hate this film but I've always loved it. It's the best alien movie I've ever seen and in fact was the first sci-fi film I ever loved. The alien and spaceship designs are great and the CGI (for 1996) is fantastic. This is also the film I think of when talking about Will Smith post-Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and becoming the A-list actor that he is today. This is also director Roland Emmerich's masterpiece. He's also directed some enjoyable B-action films, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, STARGATE and THE PATRIOT. I try to watch this every year around this time like other seasonal movies (A CHRISTMAS STORY, HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, etc.)

Are you kidding? Didn't you ever watch the GI Joe cartoon? They shot a million lasers from their guns all over the place and nobody ever got hit! Except for an occasional jet here or there, but the guy inside always, while engulfed in the explosion, ejected and parachuted to safety.

If anyone kicked ass back then, it was He-Man! By the power of Grayskull!

Solyaris (1972) ***

This is the russian version, directed by Tarkovsky. I don't know if it is just me or if the plot is actually a little ambiguous and left to interpretation. More than the plot, I like the way the movie deals with some of the most basic, but unanswerable questions about life, death, humanity etc. It is very slow, absorbing and beautiful. It also poses a lot of provocative philosophical questions through the dialogue. Tarkovsky seems to switch between B/W and color arbitrarily(or so it appears) in different scenes. It doesn't seem to accomplish anything other than making us aware of the underlying technology in film-making, which might be bad. In any case, I like this version better than the english one with George clooney.

He-Man? What kind of weak kid wanted to magically transform into a steroid beef cake of a man-raper?

As for G.I. Joe, the toys kicked ass. Pocket size, you could carry a good platoon in your pocket, and such cool retarded names. Tunnel Rat, Jouster, etc.

On Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955):
Black comedy in which death is as overbearing as it would be in Vertigo, with Burks' cinematography bringing an autumnal reverence and the dialogue peppered with reference back to the corpse causing problems; the difference is the matter-of-fact way in which everybody here goes about dealing with it. It should have been a lot funnier (especially with Edmund Gwenn, years after Hitchcock's The Skin Game) than it is, but the delivery is awkward for the most part. An interesting departure from material for which he was - and is - better known.

And Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950):
The title credits unfold as a stage curtain raises and reveals London; thereafter, a mastepiece of intricate performances within performances, as acting and theatricality provides the main thematic thread, and a murder mystery providing the adequate stage for it. Every character is hiding under some sort of pretence to someone else - our heroine to everybody else, her mother, father, the villain, the suspect, the detective investigating everything. The twist ending could easily have ruined things, but doesn't, due to the stagebound denoument, the silence before it, the lighting and sweat upon the actors shot in close-up. Alistair Sim steals the show, and his efforts to win a doll by shooting a duck at a fair are hilarious.

Wow, Vern shat on TRANSFORMERS, and you know what? He's right.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33228

I mean, that one of his last paragraphs where he talks of how because of great popcorn fare of the past, he doesn't let mediocre summer blockbuster CRAP fucking slide....that's the entire basis of such popcorn fare.

Just because its not a serious film or an art picture or a political picture doesn't mean you shouldn't give a fuck when making it.

Solyaris is an astonsihing film. The final moments are breathtaking.

No, it's not just you. Lots of European art cinema then and art cinema now favor ambiguity. Tarkovsky sought not to be overly straightforward nor impenetrably symbolic or abstract; he sought somewhere in the middle.



You missed stuff. There was a purpose behind the color switches. Some instances were extremely practical - to denote the past. Recall, the bald-headed man, Burton, playing the videotape at the home in the beginning in the movie. He was the young man being questioned in the b&w sequence.

Anyway, now that you've seen Solaris, you should seek out Tarkovsky's Stalker. A "science-fiction" that achieved what Tarkovsky wanted to do, but felt he failed with Solaris.

Personally, I also think Stalker is superior to Solaris. It's also his most exciting film.

Do not miss it.

I have to say, I agree with 24 here.

STALKER surprised the shit out of me. Really, Tarkovsky was the Soviet Union's best filmmaker (oh yeah, I could say Eisenstein, but guess what? Tarkovsky has a better batting average).

As for SOLARIS, I really liked it...and its better than the Steven Soderbergh remake (though I have to say, the remake is pretty good on its own, but it lacks that certain touch that Tarkovsky's picture held.)

Tarkovsky may have thought SOLARIS failed, I don't.

STORY OF A PROSTITUTE
(First Viewing)

Seijun Suzuki directed this hard-hitting account of a woman who volunteers to serve as a "comfort woman" (prostitute to the Japanese army) at the Manchurian front in 1937. Harumi (Yukimo Nogawa) is desperate to get out of Japan to escape the memory of a doomed romance. She offers to serve the Army in Manchuria, where the sadistic Lieutenant Narita (Isao Tamagawa) uses her violently and wants her as his private servant. However, Harumi has become infatuated with Mikami (Tamio Kawachi), Narita's subordinate, and they embark on an affair that would mean certain punishment for both of them if it were ever to be discovered.

Probably the most enjoyable film from Seijun Suzuki that I've seen. He had a few choice shots such as the 2 overheads shots (I don't know why but I dig overhead shots). Also, the slow motion, especially towards the end, and the "dream" sequenes were a nice touch.

Thanks 24fps! I'll watch it. Somehow I like this type of science fiction than the technology based ones. One of the reasons I like Fountain so much is its similar approach to science fiction.

Oceans 12 (no stars)
RRA has gone into the details of why it is bad. Just believe him and don't go my route of finding out the hard way. In short, don't watch it.

Did you see OCEAN'S 13 yet svsg? It's the best of the trilogy

No Irish, the reason I watched 12 was to make sure that I saw the whole thing in sequence. I am planning to watch it after a month or so when it comes to $-theater

Gotcha. What rating did you give OCEAN'S 11?

I liked Oceans 11. The chemistry among the actors was great and I liked it for having a lot of clever action scenes compared to oceans 12. Andy garcia is totally relegated to some small role in 12 and many others were not utilized at all.
Oceans 11(nice entertainment) - **
Oceans 12(boring) - no stars