See any movies lately?

112 responses total.

T3 is a hoot.  The crane-chase scene is an amazing parody
of the typical blowed-up-real-good action sequence.  And
I thought "The Hand" stuff was too cute.  Catch a matinee
and check your brain at the door.

Many funny scenes in that movie.  The babelicious TX checking herself 
out in the mirror as she strides through the bathroom on her way to do 
battle with Arnold was my favorite.  Also, minor goosebumps when the 
prototype of the search-and-destroy robot vehicle that appears in 
the "future" scenes in T1 and T2 first rises into view at the military 
base.

We rented Adaptation (D+) and The Hours (B), neither of which we saw at 
the theater.  Adaptation was unfunny and unenlightening.  Mainly just 
retarded.  The Hours featured a smattering of literary history, which 
was fun, and a good performance by Ed Harris.  The music by Philip 
Glass was awful.

        Thank god someone else found Adaption lifeless.

Saw X2 yesterday.  I liked it, but there was something missing to me; 
can't put my finger on it.  The best part for me was at the beginning 
in the White House.  As for the new characters, Nightcrawler was 
alright, but he's supposed to be furry, other than that, he was the 
best of the new guys.  It was pretty obvious that there's gonna be a 
sequal.  

T3 was the best movie out there in the theaters X2 is good too but u got to
watch T3 its the $hit!!!

        If you say so.  It kinda felt like a nicely produced episode of
Twilight Zone to me.

resp:4 no, no, my good man, Beast is furry.  Nightcrawler is not furry 
at all.  They changed him a little bit with the jagged teeth and the 
glyph tattoos, but they remained moderately faithful to his appearance 
in the comic books.  As for Beast, he has a cameo as Hank McCoy-- he 
was in the scene on the television at the bar with Mystique and the 
security guard.

(I am still waiting to see if they will play out the fact that 
Mystique is Nightcrawler's mother in the comic books.)

My 7 year old and I went to see "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" on 
Friday, the day it opened.  There was only one other group in the 
theater; a man and two girls about John's age.

This is a plain old formula adventure cartoon.  It has a guy named 
Sinbad, who is not like the literary version.  Some critics have 
objected to this, but I say, so what?  My kid hasn't read Sinbad.  
Come to think of it, neither have I.

I liked this movie.  I liked it better than "Finding Nemo", and I 
already like it better than the upcoming Rug Rats movie.  All three 
cartoons, you see, are set in or on the ocean.

There is a little bit of violence in this movie, but I didn't judge it 
to be an objectionable amount.  There are some scary scenes.  It's 
scarier than "Finding Nemo".

It's not as pretty as "Finding Nemo".  The characters and scenes look 
sharply unrealistic compared to what Pixar produces.

This movie is a giant flop nationally.  On it's opening weekend, it 
took in just a few million dollars.  It sold less than "Finding Nemo" 
did this weekend.

Nuts to that.  I liked it.

You may have something there.  Why did it flop?  Was it up against too
much?  Or was it 'sinful' and 'bad'?  Did parents drag their kids to see
something they wanted instead of apparently a very nice kids movie?

Speaking of Sinbad, over the holiday weekend Turner Classic Movies
did a festival of the Sinbad "Dynamation" movies from the 1950s
through the 1970s, with special effects by Ray Harryhausen
(Cyclops monsters, battling skeletons, the Medusa, etc.).
Kitch maybe, but great fun.

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Re. #7:  I can't speak for the comics, but according to both X-Men 
cartoons, Kurt's referred to himself as "fuzzy" on several occations.

I saw "Whale Rider" this week. Best movie I've seen in years. Will see it
again. Anyone want to join me?

I watched "Disco Pigs" a few days ago.  Very sad story about love and growing
up and so forth.  Set in Ireland, with a dialect and accent that took a lot
of concentration for me to make words out of.  I thought that the presentation
was very effective, almost minimalist in a lot of ways (e.g. there are long
periods of almost total silence, with no soundtrack).  Good acting.  

Good movie, but have a hankie or two handy.  

resp:13 is that still at the michigan?

For a real hoot (ananny) don't miss "A Mighty Wind" now at Gladstone.  Some
of the lines are priceless even if the audience didn't laugh.  However sounds
of outright laughter were heard throughout the movie.  

I'll go with ya, Katie.

I liked "On Guard," which was a swashbuckling movie at the Michigan.

"On Guard" is the first of a four-week series of contemporary French
movies being presented by the Michigan. 
 
The USA title of the movie seems to have been chosen just because
there are lots of swordfights; the French title was "Le Bossu," 
The Hunchback.  The star was Daniel Auteuil, who I last saw 
as an office worker pretending to be gay in "The Closet."
 
In this movie, Auteuil is a poor guy in the 1700s in France who 
has aspirations to become a great swordsman.  He's befriended by a duke 
and hired as a bodyguard, so he's around when the Duke is killed as
part of a plot to steal his fortune.  Auteil saves the Duke's infant
daughter who is also a target of the baddies and raises her himself, and 
16 years later the story starts moving towards retribution and revenge.
It was old fashioned fun, with a really likable and well played hero.   
Based on an 1857 novel, roughly contemporary with the novel "The Three 
Musketeers."  

My favorite French actor Philippe Noiret has a small 
role as the senior French nobleman of the family who goes on to become
the regent in charge of the kingdom.   (I looted imdb.com extensively
for details here...)   Director was Philippe de Broca, who made two 
wonderful comedic police thrillers, DEAR DETECTIVE and JUPITER'S THIGH,
both starring Noiret.

Not available on home video, it seems.

Speaking of sword fighting: the Michigan's summer classic film series 
offers THE SEVEN SAMURAI on Sunday and Tuesday.  One of the greatest 
action-adventure films; the Michigan promo blurb credits it with 
inventing the modern action movie, IIRC.  Directed by Akira Kurosawa,
black and white, 1954.  This is one of the Movie Classics that 
Everyone Should See; Hollywood remade it as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. 
 
And then, back in the French series: in two weeks the movie will be 
GOD IS GREAT, BUT I'M NOT starring Audrey Tatou, who played the lead 
in the very successful movie AMELIE.

Hmm, may have to check out that 'God is Great, But I'm Not'

Missed "Spirited Away" in the theater but watched it on DVD
last night.  Quite blew me away.  An animation masterpiece.

Saving money is good.

Re #21: I only recently discovered Miyazaki's movies.  The four I've seen so
far were all good:  Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service
and Castle in the Sky.

"My Neighbor Totoro" has a totally off-putting CD box.  Looks like it's going
to be a really cheesily animated stupid kiddy film.  But from the first frame
of the actual movie you know you are in for something quite different.  The
animation is mostly gorgeous.  (Some of Miyazaki's kids have oversized mouths
of a style that always reminds me of "Speed Racer".  Maybe it's a Japanese
style thing, but it always puts me off.)  Story is about two little girls
and their dad who move into a rundown old house to be near the hospital where
their mom is recovering from some illness.  The kids eventually start trading
favors with a forest spirit.  The relationships among the characters are
uniformally realistic and charming.  The supernatural elements are inventive
and just plain cool.  There are no villians.  In fact, everyone is stunningly
nice.  And yet the film has plenty of dramatic tension.  I suspect this was
the breakthrough film for Miyazaki - the Totoro character from it is used
as the logo for his studio.  Many elements from it reappear in "Spirited
Away" - it's in some ways a first glimpse of the same spirit world.

"Kiki's Delivery Service" is almost not a fantasy at all.  There is only one
fantasy element - the heroine is a witch who's only magical ability is to
fly on a broomstick.  She is 13 years old and off on her own for a year to
try to learn the witch business.  She settles in a town where the people
are mostly rather bored by the idea of a witch in their midst.  Since her
only trick is flying her broomstick (which she isn't particularly good at),
she starts a flying delivery service.  It's a story about loneliness, and
finding your own way in the world.  Again, no villians, no scares.  I
thought the ending was flawed - a big action sequence which gives Kiki a
bit too easy an out for resolving her doubts.  Arlo loves this one.

Castle in the Sky was the weakest of the ones I've seen.  It's cool.  The
Disney version has the oddity of Mark Hammill (aka Luke Skywalker) voicing
the villian's part.  This one is full of gun fights and explosions and
killer robots and all that old stuff.  It has a fun pirate queen and a
visually interesting world, but basically it's a pretty standard adventure
flick,  Ok, but not as good as the others.

resp:21 isn't it lovely?

resp:23 Roger Ebert positively raved about "My Neighbor Totoro." I 
haven't seen it yet.

Re Mark Hammill:  I'm told he also voiced The Joker for the animated
Batman.  Apparently he thinks the work is a huge amount of fun.

Pirates of the Caribbean got four thumbs up from the Prices. I want to see
it again, and I would even pay full price. (I only ever go to matinees and
I never see movies twice, because they never seem worth it. Pirates is worth
it.) It's fun, it's got swashbuckling, and well... I am a sucker for a good
pirate movie (Captain Blood and the other Sabatini books are still re-reads
because they're so fun). Johnny Depp's performance only adds to the fun,
although I never would have thought I'd like such an ambigous character. (I
still like Orlando Bloom's "stodgier" turn as a straight romantic hero, and
I'm glad they included both in the movie.)

My son and I watched a couple of older movies recently.  The first was 
Mulan.

Mulan is a Disney movie set in medieval China.  I'd never seen it 
before, and was quite surprised.  I liked it.

I liked Mulan, who goes to war in place of her aged father, disquising 
herself as a man and then encountering reasonable difficulties.  I 
liked the way she was clearly a woman, having realistic enough 
problems fitting into a strictly man's army and overcoming them in a 
clever enough way.  

I enjoyed the humor of the situation, and of the movie; the rough 
humor of the songs the soldiers sing and things they do, the obvious 
humor of the captain training his troops (including Mulan) and 
declaring in a song, "I'll make a man out of you", and I liked the 
bath scene, which was well targeted at adults while not much raising 
the notice of a young child.

I liked the basic training section quite a lot.  I liked the setting.  
I don't know anything about China, and don't imagine this was in any 
way accurate, but it was appealing enough.

I often don't like movies (or books) the first time.  I liked this one 
just fine.

Tonight, we watched The Yearling, which I had to buy from amazon.com.  
No one around Tecumseh has it for rent.  This was the original; I 
could have rented the remake but refused to do so.

My father cautioned me that it might be emotionally tough for my 7 
year old.  Hah!  My father could have warned me it'd be hard for 
*me*.  John was fine.  I'm the emotional one when it comes to movies, 
and this one had me streaming tears.  (John didn't notice.  I had to 
*tell* him.)

This is a wonderful classic, in my opinion.  (I feel the same way 
about The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Old Yeller, and half of 
John Wayne's westerns.  So sneer at me.)  I saw it when I was around 
my son's age, then never again until now.  I didn't remember it scene 
by scene, of course, but I did remember more or less what was coming 
next.

I like this one because it's a good dad-and-son movie.  I think my son 
liked it because of the scenery, and will remember it (at least until 
we watch it again) as a fun movie because a kid has a pet deer.  That 
works for me.

re#27: oddly enough _Mulan_ probably was in keeping with the chinese
oral traditional history more in the observation than not.  I know many
chinese families that enjoyed it.  The irony in _Mulan_ is that the "bad
guys" in the movie in fact ruled china from about the middle 1600s to
modern times - it is even politically correct in the current PRC (not
that I suggest there will be another - a politically correct statement).
Contrast _Mulan_ with another animated feature, _Pocahontas_ et al where
the events portrayed had little or nothing to do with actual history
other than perhaps some names.  

I see lots of movies. Sometimes two a day. Mostly get older movies on 
tape from the video library here (in Muscat, Oman). Saw "Shipping 
News" yesterday. Weird but nice movie.

Re #29:  There's a fast-food Chinese restaurant at Briarwood that used to
         be part of a chain called Manchu Wok.  When the guy broke off from
         it, he renamed the place Ming Wok.  Victorious at last!

It was largely "Pocahantas" which caused me to believe the background 
of "Mulan" was probably wildly inaccurate.  Brian, does "Mulan" mean 
something in Chinese?

Hua mu-lan doesn't particularly mean anything I think.  Often as not
chinese will name a child with something that does have lucky ot good
meaning.  I know a guy named "good fortune" and a girl named "fertile
field".  I know one guy - son of a 1949 ex-pat who's name is "supple
willow victorious".

It may seem strange to westerners at first who don't realize how many of
their own names have similar derivations although long since forgotten.
Emanuel for example.  Or Elizabeth.

One of my former co-workers is Chinese, and she just finds it easier (and more
accurate) to have everybody call her "Rainbow" instead of trying to pronounce
the Chinese.

Occasionally confuses people who were expecting some hippie girl, though.

Same goes for Indian names, a lot of them are derived from words that 
meant something like "peace" or "humility", and others are still used 
in everyday language, like mine

I know someone named Asma.  Any idea what that means?

I'm guessing a derivative of the word that means "sky". I could be way 
off on this one.

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this weeks Saturday midnight movie at the State is Edward Scissorhands.  Come
celebrate surviving another round of Art Fairs!

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