Enter your reviews, thoughts, and mindless criticizms of movies here.

177 responses total.

Rented RIDICULE (C-) the other day.  It takes place in pre-
revolutionary France "Where Louis-whoever ruled, but wit was king."
The French have a long, long way to go in the wit department, if
this movie is the best they can come up with.  Their idea of
"wit" is peeing on an elderly stroke victim who once insulted
you, and such exchanges as:

Courtier A: You're not as stupid as you look.

Courtier B: That's the main difference between you and me.

In the next scene, Courtier B is congratulated on his cleverness.
Too bad Courtier A didn't come back with, "Are you suggesting
that I *am* as stupid as you look?"  Then they'd've congratulated
*him* instead.

in&out was funny, plot kinda lost it towards the end.
saw chasing amy again the other day, reminded me how funny it was.

Re: #1  The French *love* Jerry Lewis.  I rest your case.

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so it's sort of a "family" film.  that's funny.  i really enjoyed it. (the
film)

 I can't say I enjoyed "Chasing Amy," but I am glad I viewed it.

 And I like Jerry Lewis.  <sly grin>

Saw the Untouchables for the first time in a few years.  Liked it, though some
of the motifs were inconsistent.  I thought Connery was great as a
not-quite-perfect but generally upright cop.

Public Enemy, with James Cagney, was.. interesting.  Not great, but not bad
by any means.  It seemed slightly shallow and pointless, but I pass that off
as the necessity of the times.  Some of the dialogue was sickly amusing.

I should point out that I'm in a film class, so I'll be watching a lot of
movies that I can review on here.  It's a nice class. (We're watching King
Kong at the moment)

Hi everybody,
can anyone please give me the Oscar award winning movies list,
for the last 10 or 15 years. it would be greatly appreciated.
I donnt wanna miss thesz.
thanx

Finished King Kong today.  Very hokey movie, with a lot of hilarious dialogue.
Considering the time, the effects weren't awful, you could understand what
was going on.  Pacing wasn't very even.

Re #8:  I believe all the Oscar winners are available at www.oscar.com .

Last night I purchased and watched the new THX widescreen video of Hitchcock's
"Psycho" Fantastic!  I think it just came out this past week, I didn't know
until I saw it in Best Buy.  This was a movie that just begged for a new
transfer, especially in letterbox. THX always does a great job on all the
video transfers they produce. "Vertigo" looks gorgeous, "My Fair Lady" also.
I'm curious, is this sort of thing important to anyone else?  Personally, 
I'm a widescreen addict!  Also, sound quality.  Did anyone else know that
until the recent THX remasterings, the Star Wars movies were not produced in
Dolby Surround Sound?  Boy, I think it makes all the difference.  I'd like
to know what others think....

I'm going to be getting the Special Edition Trilogy Widescreen fairly soon...

Re #11: Yes, those things are important to me also. I'll have
to check out "Psycho".

I've been watching entirely too many rented movies recently...  saw Down
Periscope, McHale's Navy, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Extreme Justice, Everyone
Says I Love You, Beauty and the Beast, Groundhog Day, and Inventing the
Abbots.  Yes, I saw all of these over the weekend so far :)  call me a couch
potato... :)

Agora item 19 <-> Cinema item 14

Re #14: Those movies you listed can be summed up as the Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly. (Determining which is which is left as
an exercise for the reader.)

"ULEE'S GOLD"--  This was a really moving movie about dysfunctional people
and families, and the importance of family,  starring Peter Fonda as a
shy, widowed, bee-keeper in Florida, who is raising his two
grand-daughters alone because his son is in jail and his daughter in law
is a junkie who ran off and abandoned her kids.  Fonda ends up
reluctantly, at his son's begging, going to rescue his daughter-in-law
from some drug dealers and brings her home to dry-out.  Fonda has some
hard feelings about his daughter-in-law and is worried about bringing her
back into his and his grand-daughters lives.  But family is family and
family takes care of family.  Fonda and his daughter-in-law have to come
to terms with each other, and with the past.

The analogy in the film is that Fonda's character is a bee-keeper by
profession, and is also the bee-keeper of his family, the one who
maintains the hive so the bees can make their honey.  He is the sane
person in a complex and dysfunctional family, and even though he is
extremely shy and bad at relating with people, he is the one who has to
keep things together.

This is a really well made and well written film.  Peter Fonda is great
playing the bee-keeper and is almost certainly get an academy award
nomination.  Go see "Ulee's Gold"  **** (four stars)

    

"ulee's gold" was directed, btw, by the same guy who directed 
"Ruby in Paradise", another terrific film from a couple years back/.

When I read _A Thousand Acres_, by Jane Smiley, I felt it
was an exquisite piece of writing.  I almost didn't want
to see the movie for fear it would have been Hollywoodized.
But I took the chance (optimist that I am ;-) ) and found
the book has been made into a wonderful film that is very
true to Smiley's story. Jessica Lange could be looking
at another Oscar nomination for her performance.
y

I saw "Slingblade" on video last night.  I liked it until it turned violent,
at which point I stopped liking it.

Re #18:  Thanks for that reference, Richard; I liked Ruby in Paradise too.
I'll have to try to see Ulee's Gold.

  Saturday night, for lack of any better offers, I went with one friend
  to see "Ulee's Gold" and another to see "Chasing Amy", both at the 
  Fox Village.  While I enjoyed "Chasing Amy" (mostl..  it qualifies for
  at least a B-) I thought "Ulee's Gold" never really went anywhere..
  Instead of Peter Fonda marching around being grumpy for a few hours
  I would have really liked some more character development.  It wasn't
  a bad movie, it just was unexceptional in nearly every way (except for
  the novelty of not being a mainstream Hollywood flick but there're 
  enough independent films around these days that films don't score big
  points for that alone.

 I really wanted to see Ulee's Gold when I first heard about it,
 but I figured it would be another one of those things that I and
 none of my friends would wish to see, so I'd wait to rent it.  
 Anyway, I'm feeling newly encouraged.....  But I'm wondering how 
 long it has been at Fox....  

 I'm also wondering what "Everyone Says I Love You" is about.  It 
 sounds...interesting... by its title..  

        I found the parody of Star Wars, Hardware Wars Special Edition,
at Borders for under $10.00.  It may have been to much for this 18 minute
movie, but its a cult classic.

Ivy- go see it asap, it might not be there after Friday. Good movie.

THE EDGE (B+) - Now I want to move to Vancouver, BC.  Absolutely
the most beautiful scenery you've ever seen.  I don't think the
plot and characters were quite as awful as some reviewers are
saying, but even if it's a total turkey in that department it's
still worth seeing.  Rated R for intensity, gore and language.
Joke, which I think I read on Grex: A man is approached by a
panhandler asking for money.  The man says, "Neither a borrower
nor a lender be --- William Shakespeare."  The panhandler replies,
"Fuck you --- David Mamet."  It's true, even in this movie.
Hearing Anthony Hopkins refer to the bear as a "motherfucker"
is pretty funny, I admit.

I actually heard a lot of glowing reviews about this movie.  

Vancouver is nice, except that its getting insanely overbuilt.  Living in
Vancouver is impossible, you need to live in a suburb, which is a good hour
commute away.

(Vancouver's geographical problem is that its suburbs can really only 
extend in one direction, generally southeast.  It's hemmed in by 
water and mountains, which is what makes it so beautiful.)

West Bloomfield should have such problems.

We rented VOLCANO (D).
Must've sounded like a cool concept to someone.  A volcano erupts
in L.A.  But think about it for a minute.  It can't turn into a
thousand-foot-high monster, because then there would be no L.A.
and no story.  So it has to just ooze lava all over one neighborhood,
and the main characters have to divert the lava into a storm drain.
A few people are burned to death, but a dog escapes, of course.
I understand the movie is filled with L.A. insider jokes, none of
which I got.

The movies I would list probably wouldn't have been seen by many of you,
so I shall decline from further response until such time as I go to see a
movie at the theatre.

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I know what you mean.  Elle McPherson put on all that weight.
It did increase her bust size, though, so it wasn't all bad.

Saw My Best Friend's Wedding at the Fox.  It was a lot of fun.

  I saw 2 over the weekend

 Seven. (3 stars)
   The story was extremly disturbing, as was most of the movie, but on a
different level it was highly intriging, and mysterious. Brad Pitt came off
as too cocky and Morgan Freeman was a little to jaded for my taste. I normally
like Mr. Freeman's work, but not in this one. The storyline was rushed in my
opinion, and the crime was solved all too quickly. Sometimes, serial crimes,
especially murder happen over weeks and months somehow that made the film
unbelieveable. Still, worth a few bucks, but not as a first run.

 Mr Holland's Opus. (4 stars)
   It started slow, but it ended great. Richard Dreyfuss was at his best, and
I think he should've won the Oscar, but I know he didn't. It reminded me of
some of the teachers I had when I was in school. Funny we don;t realize that
these people are dedicated to education, and as a result are not appreciated
like they should be. It was worth seeing, and it's one I just might buy.

"CONTACT"--  This was a pretty good, though somewhat disappointing movie.
Based on Carl Sagan's book.  It is obvious that Sagan lost his athiesm in
his later years, or else why would a champion of science write a book
embracing religion?  I was expecting another "Close Encounters of the
Third Kind", and instead got a melodrama about a woman coming to terms
with the long ago death of her father.  I think some of the characters
were unrealistic (Matthew McCaughey as a fallen priest who becomes a
religious advisor to the white house while still in his 20's?!...sixty
year old Tom Skerritt being chosen to be the astronaut on a long space
voyage?!)   And other characters were not really developed, like the
reclusive billionaire who funds Jodie Foster's program.  And the blind guy
who is Jodie's partner in the program.  

The movie is beautifully photographed and well acted, but unfortunately it
has too many script problems.  ** (two stars or about a C)

I think you misunderstood Carl Sagan's attitude toward religion, Richard, if
you think the book "embraced" it.  I don't think that's what he was doing at
all.

 I would have to agree with aruba.  It seemed to me that instead of 
 embracing religion, the movie was pointing to it with a questioning
 hand...  

 Is Tom Skerritt really in his 60's?
 

I havent read the book, but I just know the movie seemed to glorify 
McCaughey's character and his religios based wisdom.  Jodie ends up 
in his arms. The whole movie seems to be how JOdie Foster realizes she
was way too cynical about religion and faith.  

Maybe this was just the movie, maybe it was a "Hollywoodization" of thook.
It would be typical of Hollywood to dullthe edges of the work of
a controversial writer.  Im not sure Sagan would have likerd this movie.

        He was around enough to be around the filming (and be in it--
observer at the second launch).

Hmmm...  I agree that some of the edges were dulled by Hollywood, but I
didn't think it glorified religion, just gave it a little air time.  And I
didn't think Jodie Foster's character repented of being a scientist, or
anything like that.  I thought the last scene, where she admits that she
might be wrong, was in fact a great affirmation of science, because the
essence of science is a search for the truth, and in that search you must
always be willing to admit that you were wrong.  Otherwise it's
demagoguery.  One of Carl Sagan's biggest arguments for for science over
religion (and here I'm drawing from his 1996 book "The Demon Haunted
World") was that major religions don't encourage people to challenge the
established order, but instead supress challengers and call them heretics. 
Whereas in science, the highest honors are given to people who topple
established theories.

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