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Grex > Cinema > #21: The Summer Movie Critique Item |  |
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| 25 new of 290 responses total. |
senna
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response 175 of 290:
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Aug 11 16:06 UTC 1998 |
Somehow I find the critiques of Saving Private Ryan, including mine, to be
amusing--"relentless, nonstop gore. Excellent movie, A+." Is that just me,
or is this really a unique issue? :)
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bjorn
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response 176 of 290:
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Aug 11 17:19 UTC 1998 |
on August 8th, scg, Dave Warner, and I saw "Snake Eyes". We thought it was,
um, interesting.
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coyote
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response 177 of 290:
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Aug 11 23:07 UTC 1998 |
Re 174:
Really? I though The Full Monty was a really funny, cute movie.
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maeve
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response 178 of 290:
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Aug 11 23:27 UTC 1998 |
I liked the Full Monty, but then I was biased..a lot...
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happyboy
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response 179 of 290:
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Aug 12 01:35 UTC 1998 |
you have a think for chubby nekkid guys?
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md
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response 180 of 290:
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Aug 12 12:48 UTC 1998 |
LOLITA (A) -- Somebody read the novel on which this movie is based
and then crafted an amazingly detailed visual representation of it.
Not much of Nabokov's language brilliance remains, but the scenes
are so beautifully detailed that many of them came close to matching
the mental images I've always had of the book's people and places.
An awful lot of stuff has been left out that Kubrick managed to
include in his version 35 years ago, such as John and Jean Farlow,
Frederick Beale, etc. These were wonderful Nabokovian comic
characters, whose absence is more than made up for, imho, by the
loving, almost obsessive, detail paid to other things, such as the
various motels, Beardsley school, and the Kasbeam barber. Above
all, the movie captures the rich, inescapable horror of Nabokov's
novel. Hubert's sexual paradise had skies the color of hell-flames,
he said, and it's all there. The screenwriter added a couple of
years to Dolores's age (making her 14 instead of 12) and also to
Humbert's age (40ish instead of mid-thirties), but the shame and
horror are still there. Now if we can talk Adrian Lyne into doing
Pale Fire .. .
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md
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response 181 of 290:
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Aug 12 13:03 UTC 1998 |
LETHAL WEAPON 4 (D) -- I was hoping that Chris Rock might inject
some new life into this tired old franchise. No such luck.
SPHERE (C) -- One of those movies you hate because of all the cool
things it could have done and didn't. The three main actors, Dustin
Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharon Stone, are three of my
all-time favorites, though, so just seeing them trying to keep
straight faces was worth the price of the rental.
JACKIE BROWN (B) -- Not bad at all. Extremely well-cast, especially
Samuel L. Jackson as a not-very-bright but very vicious villian.
(Jackson is turing into the male version of Anne Heche -- he seems
to be in every other movie I see.)
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maeve
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response 182 of 290:
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Aug 12 14:46 UTC 1998 |
close :) the accents are the third on my list of favourites...and there are
some amazingly funny visual puns(?)
(I'm not sure how to explain visual puns ot people..it's kind of a dancer
thing..)
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happyboy
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response 183 of 290:
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Aug 12 21:25 UTC 1998 |
re180
did the movie show chafemarks from her retainer?
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senna
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response 184 of 290:
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Aug 13 09:26 UTC 1998 |
Hmm. Something About Mary was quite amusing and rather good. Not for the
faint of heart, though.
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md
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response 185 of 290:
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Aug 13 10:44 UTC 1998 |
Re #183, no, Dolores Haze always takes her retainer out first in
this movie. She didn't wear a retainer at all in the novel, though,
so that's one of the screenwriters' added details. Btw, I didn't
like Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze. Shelly Winters was much
better in the Kubrick version. Neither Peter Sellers nor Frank
Langella is very close to the Clare Quilty of the novel. I would
have casted someone like Jason Alexander or Wallace Shawn, or even
Harvey Feirstein if I could get him to calm down. The gruesome and
nightmarish murder scene at the end of the new movie is lightyears
better than the Kubrick version. It follows the novel almost step
by step. But Quilty needs to be more prissy and theatrical about
the whole thing. Imagine a man being shot to death, and with each
bullet he twitches and smirks and actually seems to be having fun
with it, saying things like, "Ah! Very painful. Very painful, indeed.
God! Hah! That hurts atrociously, my good fellow. I pray you desist."
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remmers
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response 186 of 290:
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Aug 13 17:23 UTC 1998 |
Well, he was more prissy than most people would be under the
circumstances.
I largely agree with you about "Lolita", both the new version and the
Kubrick rendition. Melanie Griffith was miscast -- she's much too
attractive for those things that Humbert wrote about her to be
convincing. I thought Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain were excellent as
Humbert and Lolita respectively.
Gone from the new version were most of the novels's comic and satirical
touches that showed up in Kubrick's treatment. I think that resulted in
a significant shift of focus. Maybe it's worth remembering that Nabokov
himself wrote the screenplay for the Kubrick version.
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bjorn
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response 187 of 290:
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Aug 13 17:47 UTC 1998 |
I need to see the Hell segment from Deconstructing Harry again.
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md
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response 188 of 290:
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Aug 13 22:43 UTC 1998 |
Re #186, Kubrick credited Nabokov with the screenplay, but he
ignored most of it. Nabokov's screenplay has been published,
if you want to compare it with Kubrick's movie. If Kubrick
had gone along with everything, the movie would've been about
four hours long, and Vladimir Nabokov himself would've had
a cameo.
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remmers
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response 189 of 290:
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Aug 13 23:11 UTC 1998 |
Hm... I would like to see that movie.
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maeve
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response 190 of 290:
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Aug 14 05:30 UTC 1998 |
saw Pi, it was...interesting...it was well-shot and well-scored..but the film
itself was a bit annoying
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other
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response 191 of 290:
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Aug 14 13:47 UTC 1998 |
love all that flashing light and shaky camerawork.
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maeve
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response 192 of 290:
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Aug 15 17:33 UTC 1998 |
I saw The Avengers yesterday...it was wonderful..much along hte lines of James
Bond with more Saville Row and some odd Mary Quant things on Uma Thurman..ohit
was quite wonderful..
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bruin
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response 193 of 290:
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Aug 15 18:04 UTC 1998 |
RE #192 Also, in _The Avengers_, the evil Sir August was played by Sean
Connery, the original James Bond.
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fitz
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response 194 of 290:
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Aug 15 20:29 UTC 1998 |
There's Something about Mary C-
Juvenile. This two hour movie seemed *much* longer than it was. I paid
matinee prices and did not get full entertainment value. Still, it had a few
laughs (very few).
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demon
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response 195 of 290:
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Aug 15 23:14 UTC 1998 |
replacement killers is the best damn movie every made along with halfbaked
soo put away the crap and rent these 2 great movies!
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remmers
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response 196 of 290:
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Aug 16 03:05 UTC 1998 |
Never heard of those two. Want to tell us a little bit about them?
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maeve
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response 197 of 290:
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Aug 16 03:36 UTC 1998 |
The Commitments is an adorable movie...good accents, colm meany, and..soul
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omni
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response 198 of 290:
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Aug 16 03:59 UTC 1998 |
I had the good fortune to catch Grand Canyon on cable.
It was made back in 1991, but I think it has deeper meaning to me now that
I know a little more about film it means a little more to me. It's hard to
put into words, but the meaning wasn't lost on me. It is about a group of
people each from a different strata of class, interacting and influencing
each other's lives. It shows how even the littlest of things can have a huge
impact on someone else.
Good script by Larry Kasdan, and performances by Steve Martin, Kevin Kline,
Mary Louise-Parker among others. One of the must see movies. 4 stars.
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mcnally
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response 199 of 290:
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Aug 16 06:04 UTC 1998 |
re #196: "the Replacement Killers" is Hong Kong action-hero Chow Yun Fat's
big Hollywood debut, along with Mira Sorvino.. (?) (!)
"Half Baked" looks like a lowbrow comedy of some sort..
saw "the Avengers" tonight and thought it was a bit odd.. lots of strange
humor, a weirdly-disjointed plot (if one can even call it a plot, more like
a connected sequence of scenes..) and lots of great sets and costumes..
I can't remember if the television series was similarly bizarre but this
was a pretty odd movie..
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