Fall movies!  Anything worth the $8, 4 commercials, and 5 previews?

289 responses total.

Saw the restored Metropolis at the Michigan this evening.  Pretty cool, like
having seen poorly dubbed and edited Japanese anime on TV and then finally
getting to the original.  Not all the footage was available, which actually
serves to keep the movie from being excessively long (text screens describe
missing footage).

It was always a movie you could figure out (contrary to the restoration hype)
but the restored version is a much better movie.

Having the original orchestral score is wonderful.

APOLLO 13: The Imax Experience

Went uptown to the IMAX theater to see this over the weekend.  Director
Ron Howard has taken his wonderful Apollo 13 movie and remastered it frame
by frame (which is a time consuming process) in the IMAX format.  It is
something to see a full length movie with special effects blown up into an
IMAX version.  The sound and the picture were just awesome.  When the
rocket blasted off, and you are watching it on the gigantic IMAX movie
screen (eight stories high), you almost felt like the building itself was
shaking.  Even if you have seen Apollo 13 before, it is well worth seeing
again in IMAX format.

(later this year, Star Wars: Episode II is being re-released in IMAX,
which ought to be something as well.  Lucas shot that film simultaneously
in IMAX, so no remastering will need to be done)

        I watched the Moulin Rouge DVD this past weekend.  Made me 
think I have been in training all my life to see this movie.  Not 
only did I recognize some of the songs, I recognized just about all
the songs (okay, found out they did sneek in an original or two).
I do feel that I could of found more music for them if they wanted.

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How come resp:4 fails to surprise me?

re 4:   Yes.

        One thing I'll say about Moulin Rouge - I still can't really figure
out whether I liked it or not - it's impossible to sleep through.  Unless you
were on a coke jag at the time and crashing hard.

Re #2: Cool.  I'll have to see it if the Henry Ford Museum's IMAX theater
shows it.

I should check that out, too.  I've seen Apollo 113 in some of the best
exterior scenes possible.

  113?  These sequels are getting out of hand!

i recommend 'the audition'. i think it's japanese. sit through it if you can
stomach it.

resp:11 - Have you seen 'Tampopo' or 'The Taxing Woman'? Both are 
pretty good, especially the latter.

#10:  Don't blame Ronnie for the sequel, blame NASA :)

resp:2  My understanding, from the sources I've read, is that EpII 
comes out both to DVD and IMAX in November.

I'm trucking my butt over to Spokane as fast as I can when that 
happens.  Riverside Park and Star Wars, here I come!

MOONLIGHT MILE--  This is a movie about grieving.  Dustin Hoffman and
Susan Sarandon play an average couple in a small town who had an only
child, a college-age daughter, who was killed in a senseless, meaningless
shooting in a bar (this all happens before the movie begins so it is not
giving away anything)  Their daughter was engaged to be married, and the
movie details the weeks and months following her death, and how the
parents and the young man who was her fiancee deal with their loss.  This
young man did not marry Hoffman and Sarandon's daughter, so never became
officially part of their family.  But the daughter was the glue that kept
this couple together, so they in their grief cling on to him as something
of a "replacement" for their lost child.  And he lets them, because he is
dealing with his own grief and needs to be close to her parents, the only
ones who can truly share his loss.  What happens to the relationship
between someone and their in-laws, when the link in that relationship goes
away?  This is a pretty moving, emotional movie.  Has some script issues
but featurs strong performances from Hoffman, Sarandon, and Jake
Gyllenhaal as the young widowed fiancee.  It is directed by Brad
Silberling, who directed "Election", a wonderful movie from a couple years
back.

BANGER SISTERS. This movie has a great premise and two great actresses. 
Too bad they didn't hire any good writers. It's so boring, I almost 
fell asleep watching it.

Saw "Sweet Home Alabama" last night.  It was tolerable.  Adrienne liked it
more than I did (of course).  Personally, I don't think she deserved the guy
she ended up with.  

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re 18 - was it classy the way she treated him?  What about the way she treated
his (and her) friends?  Or the way she treated her parents?

She was a selfish snob.

<haven't seen it...but from previews would have to agree with ric>
Saw MIB II last night.  Wonderful fun, for a two-hour $3 break from lab at
the campus movie program.

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You know, some of us havent' seen the movie and might want to.  Can you plese
cork it for a few weeks?

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   I dont do first run movies anymore. Wait. I did see Simone. It stunk.


   On a brighter note, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Time Bandits are
now on DVD, as is Wallace and Gromit.

The Holy Grail is one of the first DVDs I bought.

Agora 7 <-> Cinema 51

Six hours ago I'd never heard of the new German movie "Mostly Martha;"
I stumbled across it in the Michigan Theater listings and the 
reviews looked promising, and Leslie has been wanting to see some 
movies to refresh her German language skills, so we went.
 
It's a wonderfully warm, sad and funny story; in some ways a 
resetting of "About A Boy."  Martha, the protagonist, doesn't 
deal with anything in life except cooking, and then an 8-year-old
girl gets dropped into her life...  the cooking framework of the 
story is portrayed lushly, and I expect foodies will get a kick out
of that too. 
 
Highly recommended to European cinema fans.  I think it runs at the
Michigan at least through Thursday.

Hmm I will have to check that one out. 

I saw Igby Goes Down on friday at the Madstone theater in Briarwood. I 
was never especially fond of the theater there and I found that 
everything I really disliked about it is the same. The A/C was on to 
high so it was freezing and the seats are not the most comfortable 
(although they werent actually UNcomfortable either.) 

Igby Goes Down was a very enjoyable movie though. It is about a boy who 
gets kicked out of a bunch of fancy prep schools and then, instead of 
going to another one, runs away to NYC. A lot of reviewers compared it 
with Catcher in the Rye and I could see why. It is, however, not a 
retelling of Catcher in the Rye so one shouldnt expect that. 

Igby is played by Kiran McCaulkin. It took me about 10 minutes or so to 
get over his resemblence to his brother. He is a fine actor and did 
well as the poor little rich boy. Susan Sarandon played Igby's mother. 
She was fabulous, as usual. If she had had a bigger part, she would 
have stolen the show. 

The movie got kind of sappy at times but I like that. Anyone who doesnt 
like sappy, though, should watch out. There is a fine line between a 
brilliant emotional scene and overly sweet trying-to-hard to be 
touching. Unfortunately, this film crossed the line a few times. If it 
hadnt, it would have been a brilliant film. It's pretty good though 
even with the sappy parts. I cried during some of them.

Also there were some details that troubled me. For example, there is a 
character in the story who ends up as a heroin junkie. Her appearance 
gets progressively worse throughout the film. In the last scene where 
she is portrayed, she looks terrible. Her hair is unkept. Her lips are 
chapped and yet...her eyebrows are still perfectly manicured. Puh-leez! 
If she doesnt have it together enough to comb her hair or put on 
chapstick, she doesnt have it together enough to pluck her eyebrows. 
And if she is a junkie, she probably doesnt have the money to go have 
them done. 

There arent a lot of movies out in the theaters right now so Igby Goes 
Down is definately worth checking out. 

Got _Murder by the Numbers_ in the six dollar bin at _Sam's Club_
and I wonder how I missed it when it was released.  And I wonder
how it falls to the six buck bin at _Sam's Club_ so fast.  Sandra
Bullock (is that her true name?) is as usual quirky and excellent
but we still don't get to see her tittys.  Sort of a Leopold and
Loeb meets Columbine HS meets CourtTV it is still a good do at six
bucks and probably was a good do in the theater - well, at the
matinee price.  There are no twists and turns, you know everything
that is going on as it is going on but still somehow its well worth
the six bucks at the _Sam's Club' bargain bin and you could do a
lot worse.  It even has sophmoric pretensions of visual allusions
to even more boring british liturature without a clue that they
are boring, superficial, and contrived.  So crontrived in the film
they have to be deliberate.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll try to see if it is the bargain bin at the Sam's Club 
around here. 

  Big Trouble 
      Just came out on DVD/Video, and it's pretty close to the book, although
the book *WAS* way funnier. What's it about? Rent it or read the book. It's
almost undescribable.

One thing I liked about Spiderman was that the "secret identity" character
was not "perfect" - he had plenty of human flaws to make him more "normal".

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Igby Goes Down. it may not be Catcher in the Rye, but i bet if you scrape off
all the extra Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums from its reels, what you'll be
left with is Catcher in the Rye.

I loved Spiderman (except for the barely tolerable costume-designing montage),
and i will be front and center for every sequel.

Red Dragon sucked fat asses. I assume it was a different director. crappy
sets, completely uninteresting performances by everyone EXCEPT (oddly) Ralph
Fiennes... and i thought the blind girl was a good actor. I did not see
hannibal, because the story sounded from way out in the wilderness of
stupidity, and Silence of the Lambs is a first-rate creepy movie. Why the
let-down? why even bother if you're not going to do it right? 

 More to the point, why even bother if its been done pretty decently already?
 I've not read one review of "Red Dragon" that failed to offer the reviewer's
 opinion that "Manhunter" was a better movie..

Manhunter is just great.

Ditto.  I watched it again recently because Costco was selling it for like
$11.  Worth every cent.  And I have a big jones for William Petersen.

"Spiderman" was good but it didn't match "X Men" in my opinion.

AUTO FOCUS--  This is another dark character study by writer/director 
Paul Schraeder, who wrote Taxi Driver, and directed Affliction, among 
others.  It is a biopic on the life of actor Bob Crane, a well known 
Los Angeles disk jockey in the fifties/sixties who achieved even 
greater fame as Colonel Hogan in the tv series Hogan's Heroes.  This 
movie picks up right before Crane gets the part in Hogan's Heroes and 
takes you through the run of the series and the years afterward, 
showing in the process the benefits of and dangers of celebrity, and 
the rise and fall of a lonely man caught up in the web of his own 
success.  Crane had a serious sex addiction problem that he lost 
control of when he became a big tv star, and suddenly could get sex 
whenever and wherever he wanted.  He is portrayed as a deeply insecure 
man with low self esteem, who changed as a result of his celebrity and 
went from being insecure to the flip side of that, which is 
narcissism.   

As Hogan's Heroes ends, Crane deals with the pressures of his career 
suddenly flaming out, by overindulging and becoming addicted to his 
formerly closeted interests of pornography and sex.  He befriends a man 
who is an expert at audio/visual technology, such as it was in those 
days, and they both end up totally into the early seventies swinger 
scene, bringing home unknown women and filming themselves having sex 
with them.  Crane descends into more and more behaviour he has little 
ability or puts little effort into controlling-- he is a lonely man 
whose one big asset, his tv celebrity, means many women will sleep him 
and this enables him to deal with his loneliness with sexual 
encounters.  Encounters that he tapes, and later feeds his own 
narcissism by watching those tapes over and over.  It is not any secret 
how this movie ends, because it is well known that Bob Crane was 
brutally murdered in an Arizona apartment in 1978.  But this movie 
attempts to portray who Bob Crane was and what he had become, without 
being too judgemental.  

This is an excellent, riveting movie, but if you aren't into dark 
movies, or explicit sexual scenes, you probably won't like this.  Bob 
Crane is played by Greg Kinnear, in a great performance that is likely 
to make him a best actor favorite come Academy Award time.  Kinnear is 
wonderful playing a character who goes through a serious emotional 
rollercoaster during the movie.  This is the performance of Kinnear's 
career.  Crane's best friend, the audio/video expert who becomes 
his "manager" and club-hopping buddy, is played by Willem Dafoe (one of 
my favorite actors who is great in virtually everything he does) 

AUTO FOCUS (the Bob Crane story), opens nationally this coming week.  I 
give it a full four stars without question

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss