|
|
| Author |
Message |
richard
|
|
Grex goes to the movies
| 
Dec 23 04:33 UTC 2002 |
This is the movie review item. Have you seen a good movie lately?
Whether you saw it in the theater, or on video, or on cable, or just on
regular tv, what movies have you seen?
|
| 327 responses total. |
richard
|
|
response 1 of 327:
|
Dec 23 04:50 UTC 2002 |
ABOUT SCHMIDT-- Saw this yesterday and its quite good. Jack Nicholson
stars as Warren Schmidt, an aging insurance salesman who has been a slave
of routine for decades and suddenly everything changes, and this
precipitates a crisis where he starts to wonder what his life has meant.
He realizes he has spent most of his life doing a job anybody could do,
and living a life that was mundane and ordinary. Suddenly he's in his mid
sixties, and as the structure of his routine starts to go away, he wonders
if his life and existence serve any purpose or has ever served any real
purpose. He is grieving not over the losses he suddenly suffers late in
his life but over the fact that he had so little to lose.
Jack Nicholson is great in this movie. He is in virtually every scene and
brilliantly captures the character of a hopeless, desperate old man who
is experiencing finally that moment in time when he sees his whole life
with perfect clarity and must deal with the fact that he doesn't like what
he sees. Kathy Bates has an excellent supporting role here too.
Wonderful movie!
|
mynxcat
|
|
response 2 of 327:
|
Dec 23 14:50 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
|
slynne
|
|
response 3 of 327:
|
Dec 23 15:50 UTC 2002 |
I have been looking forward to seeing About Schmidt but so far, it
hasnt been released here. bah!
|
clees
|
|
response 4 of 327:
|
Dec 23 15:54 UTC 2002 |
Seen LOTR - Two Towers Last Sunday.
hmmm....
I am biased on how to judge this sequel to #1
Is it any less than #1? As far as story line is concerned, yes.
FX then? Well we have that already with Star Wars. They are alright.
Gollem is pretty convincing. Treebeard is not.
Acting? Gollem is pretty convincing, Treebeard is not.
Next to that, what's that with Arwen, Aragorn and Eowen?
If Aragorn doesn't stick with his lovely elf I'd gladly fill in that
void. Liv Tyler is a babe. Besides, she was prepared to renounce her
elfhood and give up her immortality. What greater sacrifice can be made?
|
md
|
|
response 5 of 327:
|
Dec 23 16:13 UTC 2002 |
Doing it with Viggo Mortensen?
I thought the pointy ears looked good on Liv Tyler, btw. Could've been
laughable, but very tastefully done as it turns out.
|
janc
|
|
response 6 of 327:
|
Dec 23 16:45 UTC 2002 |
Aragorn's love life gets much less play in the books. I always liked
Eowen the better of the two for no obvious reason. Maybe I just like
humans. Though Tolkien put few enough women in his stories, the ones he
put in were pretty good. We've already seen Arwen's ride, and Jackson
will probably give Eowen's adventures in the third book plenty of play.
I was a bit surprised that as long as Jackson deviated from the book by
sending a contingent of elves from Rivendell to Helms Deep (how did they
get there so fast?) he didn't send Arwen along with them. After all,
how would Elrond keep her from going to fight at Aragorn's side? Then
we'd have Aragorn, Arwen, and Eowen all in the same place and we could
do the whole romance thing without resorting to psychic communications.
Well, actually, I'm glad they didn't do that.
The Ent's weren't quite convincing ... but how do you make a convincing
Ent? A walking talking tree is not as easy to make seem real as a
humanish character like Gollum. I'd hoped for better Ents, but I think
they did a creditable job. I think I would have chickened out and shown
them mostly in dramatically lit close ups, so you couldn't really get a
clear look at them.
What I really didn't like was the way Treebeard didn't know that Saruman
had been cutting down his trees. No way! An Ent would know about every
axe stroke. Why were the Ents so down on Orcs if they didn't know Orcs
had been cutting trees? Why hadn't they been watching the part of the
forest near Saruman's tower if they knew Saruman was up to no good? If
I remember the book right, the council of Ents did decide to go to war
with Saruman. Pippen and Merry mainly helped speed up the process, so
it didn't take the usual hundred years or so to make the decision.
I also thought the victory at Helms Deep was unconvincing. Eomer's
cavalry wasn't so big a force that it seemed sufficient to turn the
battle. (In the book Eomer was at Helms Deep from the beginning.
Gandoph fetched some other army, plus the Ents brought the trees of
Fangorn forest up behind the Orcs, demoralizing them entirely.)
|
other
|
|
response 7 of 327:
|
Dec 23 18:23 UTC 2002 |
Perhaps the changes result from the compressed timescale necessary to
keep the flow of the film working with all the elements from the books
that had to be excluded in order to keep the films to manageable lengths.
|
oval
|
|
response 8 of 327:
|
Dec 23 19:19 UTC 2002 |
the last recently released movie ive seen was frida.
i give it a A for quality visual aesthetics
and a B- for overall goodness.
i was a little disappointed but my expectations were pretty high.
save your dollars for adaptation! (i can't wait)
|
clees
|
|
response 9 of 327:
|
Dec 23 20:07 UTC 2002 |
Jan, that's exactly what I remembered.
It's also what bothered me about the Arwen thing. But I like elfs
better than humans. They like trees.
I think I would have enjoyed the movie better if I hadn't read the
books.
|
remmers
|
|
response 10 of 327:
|
Dec 23 20:31 UTC 2002 |
There are three current movies on my to-see list -- "Adaptation",
"Gangs of New York", and "The Two Towers" -- but I fear that they
shall have to wait until after Christmas. Oh, also "About Schmidt",
but that hasn't opened in Ann Arbor yet.
|
ric
|
|
response 11 of 327:
|
Dec 26 02:00 UTC 2002 |
I'm looking forward to seeing The Two Towers. I mean, having read the books
and enjoyed them thoroughly, I *EXPECT* to be disappointed in some areas.
And with the first movie I was.. but I still enjoyed the movie a whole lot.
After all, compare it to the cartoon version of "Lord of the Rings". Bleagh.
From everything I've read in critical reviews, The Two Towers is even better
than Fellowship of the Ring. It certainly did better in ticket sales opening
weekend (about 25% more ticket sales, according to an article I read today).
I've also heard that the Ents were done a little strangely, but how does one
really do a talking, walking tree that doesn't look somewhat odd or silly?
|
drew
|
|
response 12 of 327:
|
Dec 26 03:15 UTC 2002 |
The treants weren't *quite* what I expected. But they weren't all that badly
done.
|
jep
|
|
response 13 of 327:
|
Dec 26 04:40 UTC 2002 |
I just got back from The Two Towers. I thought the Ents were fine. I
thought 75% of the movie was fine, but wish it had stuck to the
original plot as closely as did the first movie.
|
mooncat
|
|
response 14 of 327:
|
Dec 26 05:10 UTC 2002 |
Two Towers- spoilers, may not want to read if you haven't seen it yet:
I thought the Ents were really well done actually. As has been stated
the whole idea isn't one that's easy to put into a more visual,
workable context. The bit about them deciding NOT to go to was in the
council kinda annoyed me, but it did go on to show Pip actually having
a good idea- goes well with the growth the little Hobbit showed in the
books.
Overall I thought Two Towers was done very well, and while I had a few
complaints with the differences from the book I reminded myself that
it's a visual adaptation of a textual original. I REALLY liked what
they did with Gollum, and I really liked the conversation he had with
himself (ending with Smeagol telling Gollum (basically) to go away)
and thought they did a great job with it.
|
drew
|
|
response 15 of 327:
|
Dec 26 08:13 UTC 2002 |
Come to think of it, the treants do look like the picture in the Third Edition
Monster Manual.
|
jep
|
|
response 16 of 327:
|
Dec 26 11:30 UTC 2002 |
Drew, in Dungeons and Dragons they're "treants" but in the Lord of the
Rings they're "ents".
Spoilers here too:
The Ents don't decide to go to war, Faramir begins to take the hobbits
to Gondor to give his father the Ring instead of letting them go,
Elrond is fleeing Middle Earth to avoid the war, and Theoden is a
wimp. In the book these are all decisive, principled people making
good decisions and sticking with them even when there are difficulties.
|
jazz
|
|
response 17 of 327:
|
Dec 26 14:24 UTC 2002 |
For anyone who only liked the first one because it was reasonably true
to the book (well, except for the bit with Tom Bombadil), you're in for a
rough ride.
|
anderyn
|
|
response 18 of 327:
|
Dec 26 15:16 UTC 2002 |
Well, agreed that it's annoying that it wasn't closer to the book (I didn't
notice Theoden being a wimp as much as you did, but I was ticked about Faramir
and about Elrond's whole elves leaving thing..), but I thought that most of
the movie was well done -- it's HARD to do the middle books well, and most
of the criticisms I'd read were about how the tension was undercut by the
constant cuts between protagonists, which to me were exactly as it should be
given the books -- I was also annoyed by the whole "Aragorn being thought
dead" plot. Sheesh.
Oddly enough, my daughter, who hasnt' read the books, was really irked at
Eowyn's obvious flirting with Aragorn. She thought that since he was taken,
Eowyn should have been hands off.
|
jazz
|
|
response 19 of 327:
|
Dec 26 15:42 UTC 2002 |
I thought that the Two Towers should've been the easiest of the lot
to direct, since the majority of the story is borne up by action rather than
dialogue.
Normally a movie going that far off base irks me. In this case it
didn't. But I can see very few changes that were an improvement or a
reasonable compromise to change a written story into a filmed one.
|
jep
|
|
response 20 of 327:
|
Dec 26 18:22 UTC 2002 |
I thought they did a good job with Eowyn (except I've always pronounced
it "Yo-wen" but in the movie it was Eee-oh-win"). That's pretty much
what she was like in the book, too; she was smitten with Aragorn until
the siege of Gondor, in the hospital, when she flipped for Faramir.
I thought they did a pretty good job of switching between the scenes,
with Frodo/Samwise, Peregrine/Meriadoc, and Aragorn and company. That
must have been confusing to anyone who hasn't read the book, but then
it's confusing in the book as well.
|
other
|
|
response 21 of 327:
|
Dec 26 23:15 UTC 2002 |
I never found it confusing, I just wanted so much for each story line to
continue that it was mildly frustrating when it jumped to a different
one. Of course, by the time it jumps back, I'm reinvested in the next
one. It's a very effective way of keeping my attention, and frankly I
can't think of a better way to carry multiple divergent storylines along
in roughly the same timeframe.
|
bru
|
|
response 22 of 327:
|
Dec 26 23:34 UTC 2002 |
I don't see what the divergence from the novel adds to the story. If it had
added soemthing, I would have been more comfortable with it.
|
katie
|
|
response 23 of 327:
|
Dec 27 01:01 UTC 2002 |
I saw "Two Weeks Notice." It was not nearly as good as I expected. One
weird thing: a scene I saw in trailers on TV wasn't in the movie, and
one scene I saw in trailers was similar but not the same as the trailer.
|
tonster
|
|
response 24 of 327:
|
Dec 27 01:24 UTC 2002 |
That happens fairly often, actually.
|
