Weekly movie discussion thread.

[Alobar]

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and the fantasy world she creates to escape from some of what she sees.

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The labyrinth is not in Ofelia's head - it's real.

Edit: I guess I should elaborate on this.

There are several examples that show that labyrinth is real. I'll put these in white since they could be considered spoilers.
<font color="white">
1) The Captain picks up and crushes the chalk that was given to Ofelia by the Faun.
2) The Captain picks up the mandrake root (again, given by the Faun) and throws it in the fire.
3) Ofelia uses the chalk to create a passage into the Captain's room to get her brother.
4) At the end, a flower grows on the tree now that the toad is dead.</font>

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more in white:

<font color="white"> 1 and 2 can easily be things she got herself. 3 can also be in her head. They show a shot of the chalk outline on the wall when mercedes (I think) is looking for her and I think you can take this to mean that it wasnt real, because when ofelia does it she shes the chalk disapear, yet its obviously still there. Also when she is talking to the faun we see her through the captains eyes talking to herself. 4 is a good one. As is the fact that when she opens the book when alone in the bathroom she sees blood everywhere and then afterwords her mom starts bleeding.

I think this is one of the good things about this movie. Arguments can be made for both cases, real and not real, and both have very valid points. so its up to the viewer to think about it and decide. Im 100% for anything that makes the retarded masses have to use brain power and come to their own conclusion

I actually plan on watching this movie again, purely to look for things that help for my own personal real vs not real debate</font>

[The Yugoslavian]

Jersey Girl - 3/5 stars
Saw this yesterday on TNTHD or whatever. I used to be a HUGE Ben Affleck fan....to the point where it was embarrassing (not for me, but for ppl who knew me I guess, lol) and I basically would enjoy any movie he was in (yes, even Phantoms). More recently there are a bunch of his movies that I haven't even seen (mainly b/c most of them have no chance of being that good). Anyway, I like Kevin Smith and this is his only movie I haven't seen (I think) so I gave it a shot. It was entertaining but not memorable and Ben seemed out of place the whole time....I really don't think his character was that compelling mainly b/c he wasn't very complex....just a workaholic/anger guy doing PR and a honest/lovable guy when not doing PR. Well, whatever, I wanted a non-depressing movie b/c I've been v sick and this fit the bill.

Ninja Scroll - 3/5 stars
A "classic" (?) anime film from the mid 90s or something. It was enjoyable and some parts were cool but first, I don't remember there being a ninja scroll at all in the film (wtf I want my @#%@#$ ninja scroll if it's in the title!) and the setup and stuff wasn't hugely compelling (like maybe a movie on the backstory first would have been better) as it was never fully clear to me how the back story that motivated all the characters went down or how the characters got to their current situations. Part of my issue may be that many anime movies are based off of long TV series and manga and thus there is tons of backstory so that when you get to a movie there are layers of motivational backstory and build-up.

The Dinner Game - 4/5 stars
This movie is pretty awesome in a lot of ways. A very nice example of a really good movie that is basically just a dude in a room talking with other characters with very little actually happening (my dinner with andre and before sunrise come to mind). The movie is about this dude who has dinners with his friends where they try to invite the biggest idiot they can find. Sounds like something 2p2ers should do, actually! Anyway, I was thinking it'd be an actual dinner but instead this dude finds the hugest idiot ever then hurts himself but OH NOES the idiot dude met up with him already and now is trying to help him. Anwyay, the ending setup is predictable but everything is quite funny. Too bad it's a French film or something dumb b/c subtitles are retarded.

Yugoslav
who is sick so who knows if any of this makes sense...
PS These are simply the last 3 movies I've seen, I've been watching mainly TV and anime TV shows recently so, meh, whatevs

[pryor15]

durron,

agreed. the Good Shepherd could have been a much better film had it not tried to do so damn much.

cutting a subplot or 2 would have done wonders. but the cinematography was fantastic.

[Paluka]

Wow. I gotta disagree with the Ninja Scroll review. I love it. I've recommended it to quite a few people and never heard of someone coming away dissatisfied.

[ahnuld]

Durron hit the nail on the head with The good shepard. I found it boring and disappointing. Ok, we get it, he doesnt hsow emotion. Deniro, MOVE ON PLZ.

[7ontheline]

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Wow. I gotta disagree with the Ninja Scroll review. I love it. I've recommended it to quite a few people and never heard of someone coming away dissatisfied.

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I used to love it, but now that I have watched a lot more anime I like it a lot less. It's a nice action flick but there's minimal character development and it's hardly an epic story. It's certainly a fun film to watch but there are far better films out there. Excellent if you just want some pretty violence though, especially considering how old it is.

[Dids]

I can't see Jersey Girl being anything above a 2.5 on a 1-5 scale.

It's just such a meh movie. It wasn't horrible, it wasn't great. It was just kinda there. Mostly it confirmed for me that Smith's really at his best making dick jokes and should avoid any attempt to be taken seriously or make a point.

[BarryLyndon]

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Barry - Why did you like Half Nelson? I thought the movie was horrible.

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To begin, I thought that Ryan Gosling's performance was honest, heartfelt, quietly gripping, and effectively nuanced. I have some problems with the way the film was made, but Gosling is marvelous. I don't like to speak of actor's performances in terms of awards, but it's rare that a small indie film that didn't make a [censored] load of $$ produces a best actor nominee. So, that says something quite significant about Gosling.

The story - which, as I said, is carried by Gosling's emotion - is simple, quietly told, and important to everyone as human beings. You have a highly intelligent person who could probably be making serious $$, but he's too heartfelt, too in want to help people, to take a higher paying job. So he becomes a high school history teacher in an inner city school, which in its own right, is a terrible place for an intelligent, individualistic person to be. Because, basically, that means you're waking up everyday to the same things that distresses you about American Society as we know it - there's a [censored] load of poverty coupled with a gross under-education of those people who lived in impovershed districts. And, of course, most of these people are minorities.

And so, somewhere along the lines, Gosling developed a heroin addiction. And, through that addiction, we see his pain about the society he lives in in an extremely intense, gut wrenching way. While he's killing his body because everything is seemingly hopeless, everything around him is just entirely static or becoming worse - the stories about the civil rights movement become more gruesome as the story goes on, his parents are faux liberals who equate their political affiliations with listening to music and having light conversations in the livingroom, one of Gosling's most gifted students it becoming a crack dealer.

The film is intelligent in that it doesn't get TOO dark through its ending, and yet, it refrains from beig glowingly optimistic, shunning away from providing too much resolution. In this respect, the film is more honest as to the inherent fallibility of our institutions and our humanity - the gifted history teacher may be doing heroine next week, and the gifted student may be in jail for dealing heroine by the time she's 16. But at least their going to give themselves a chance to be better human beings.
It's all we can ask for.

There is plenty that I didn't care for about the film, but most of it was necessary for the higher quality scenes / character study to exist. For instance, I've seen about 100 movies where there is a black family that is struggling, and all of them use the exact same scenes to depict the plight - mom comes home but goes right to sleep, there's a relative in jail, etc. etc. I'm not saying that this stuff doesn't go on, but it isn't exactly gripping and I would have rather seen Gosling on edge than Shareeka Epps having a lethargic conversation with her prison guard mother.

Overall, though, Half Nelson was a strong film - it had heart, it was honest, and it spoke to things that are or should be germane to us as human beings.

[tiltowhirl]

I think a whole thread could be started on Donnie Darko, saw that about a month ago for the first time. I hadn't even heard of the movie because it was going to be released right around 9/11 and they pulled it from most places because it had a scene with an airplane engine falling into a house.

9.1

[7ontheline]

I'm a lousy writer but I'll serve up a quick review for a movie I saw recently, "Curse of the Golden Flower."

This movie is Zhang Yimou's (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) latest film, a period piece detailing a story of the imperial family during the Han(?) dynasty in China. Chow-Yun Fat plays the emperor, Gong Li plays the empress, and 3 actors I don't know play the three sons (although I think the middle son is a pop star in Asia. I heard some of his music when I was in Singapore recently. meh. He's not that good of an actor either.).

As you might expect, the cinematography is quite beautiful. The bright, garish colors of the palace and its golden interior symbolize the superficial appearance of the imperial family - pretty on the outside, rotting on the inside. The family dynamic is odd, to say the least. The empress is the mother of the two younger sons, the eldest son is from before the emperor took his throne. Chow-Yun Fat plays the emperor as an intimidating bully, chilling in how he controls his family. Gong Li is incredible as the empress - there are a number of shots of only her face (kinda like Silence of the Lambs, sans the cannibalism) and the emotion she is able to portray is impressive.

There is some of the soaring, graceful martial arts in this movie for which Zhang has become known recently. It looks fine of course, although it is a bit out of place at times - the theme of this movie is a character drama, so the martial arts bits can seem a touch incongruous. Still, it is choroegraphed well.

Overall, definitely a good movie to watch. Say, 4.5 out of 5. You should note that it is in Mandarin Chinese and subtitled in English, if that bothers any of you.

Oh, one last thing. The actresses in this movie all wear really tight dresses that push up their breasts way into view. (The breasts are admittedly small, but c'mon, they're Chinese.) Just a little bonus. My wife was complaining that this was historically inaccurate. I tried to convince her to wear dresses like this around the house, but no dice.