Movies you've seen recently

[inkrose115]

Reread the Hobbit Review. It's still just as funny. Spewed ginger ale through my nose (it hurt, dangit!).

I salute you, Brad!

[Dutch Angua]

My brother, parents and me went to see Les Miserables last night.
We liked it a lot! Even my mom, who was unfamiliar with both the book and the musical loved it. (though in the beginning my dad had to point out to her that Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine were the same person. So kudos to the make-up department )

I didn't mind that they shortened some of the songs, except that, yeah, I would've liked the complete version of 'Drink with me'...I just like Grantaire a lot. He was one of my favourite characters in the book.

Also, the way they moved 'I dreamed a dream' and 'Do you hear the people sing' were excellent. They fit so much better in the story that way.

One thing though. Russel Crow is a great actor and a good singer...but apparently he has trouble doing both at the same time.
He was good, but he could have been excellent...

[KingDavid8]

I saw Zero Dark Thirty last night, which was excellent. Largely about intelligence gathering in the hunt for bin Laden, but still a very taut thriller, even if you do know how it's going to end. I suspect some things were exaggerated in order to give it more drama and suspense (for one thing, it kind of suggests the CIA had given up on finding bin Laden, all except for the main character who made it her personal mission, which I doubt was truly the case), but it still worked.

Slight spoiler in white: There have been some complaints that the movie shows torture as an effective means of gathering information, but I'd say it shows it as being too slow and unreliable to be preferable to other means. The first half-hour or so deals with them torturing a detainee for information, but it's only when they stop torturing and start being nice to him that he starts spilling. You never see them getting information under torture.

[Embra]

Thanks for the Hobbit review Brad

Last night I watched Oranges and Sunshine, which I would recommend. It's about the forced migration of children from the UK to various countries, principally Canada and Australia. The film is set in 1987 and it was shocking to hear the main character remind a bored governmental panel that the last such deportation occurred in 1970.

[A Turtle Named Mack]

Cloud Atlas - Strange but enjoyable. The reviews said that the jumping around made the film hard to follow, but I had no problem with that, and it helped coordinate the connections between the different substories.

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by Cervus

I just got back from seeing The Hobbit in IMAX RFD 3D, and it was possibly the most amazing three hours I've ever had at the movies. It was fun, it was exciting, it was fantastic, and I was so entranced by the visuals that the first few minutes of the story were somewhat lost on me because I just kept thinking "Oh, wow!"

I do have a bit of a headache and some mild eyestrain, though, which I've never experienced from a 3D film before. I'd been thinking "I could get used to seeing every movie like this."

Apart from the visuals, how was the story? I've heard from others that it was a bit slow as they're trying to streatch the book out into three movies.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

I got Prometheus from Netflix and thought it was pretty decent. I was expecting quite a bit worse. I rather enjoyed the nebulous and dreamy quality of it overall. And I still appreciate Scott's willingness to give interesting roles to women.

[Hero_Mike]

Over the last decade I've seen maybe two movies a year, so having seen two movies in four days (Les Miz, Skyfall) and a third this coming weekend (The Hobbit) is a definitely different experience for me.

I cannot say enough good things about Les Miz - I've been a fan for over 20 years since I first heard the cast recording. Anne Hathaway alone was worth the price of admission, because she puts such a deep and meaningful performance into the songs she does. Russell Crowe is as bad as I had heard, and definitely not the best choice. He's the weakest link in all of the singing, but even that's all relative. Amanda Seyfried and Samantha Barks are amazing as Cossette and Eponine in terms of their voicing, but they pale in comparison to that "something more" that Hathaway does. Taken out of context, that would sound like criticism or even "damning with faint praise". It isn't - a gold medal performance is still a winner, even if the person in the next previous race not only won but demolished the world record.

Skyfall was good - different from the usual Bond movie in many ways. I desperately wanted to see it on a big screen but afterwards realized that it wasn't necessary. It wasn't a non-stop visual experience like some 3D action movies might be, and that's what made it a better movie. I'm a big fan of Daniel Craig in this role - reviving a franchise which was in such peril of dying. 50 years of Bond and counting....

[inkrose115]

Originally Posted by Dutch Angua

My brother, parents and me went to see Les Miserables last night.
We liked it a lot! Even my mom, who was unfamiliar with both the book and the musical loved it. (though in the beginning my dad had to point out to her that Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine were the same person. So kudos to the make-up department )

I didn't mind that they shortened some of the songs, except that, yeah, I would've liked the complete version of 'Drink with me'...I just like Grantaire a lot. He was one of my favourite characters in the book.

Also, the way they moved 'I dreamed a dream' and 'Do you hear the people sing' were excellent. They fit so much better in the story that way.

One thing though. Russel Crow is a great actor and a good singer...but apparently he has trouble doing both at the same time.
He was good, but he could have been excellent...

It was nice that they included Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk but because Grantaires role was cut, it lost much of its impact, and would have no significance to someone unfamiliar with the book. Grantaire was gazing at Enjolras the way one would look at their high school crush, and at the end he totally asked "Do you permit it?" With his eyes. Also having a former Grantaire, Hadley Fraser looking conflicted as the leader of the National Guard was a nice touch.

So far the anime series Shoujo Cosette, for being aimed at a much younger crowd, is the only adaption I know of that makes it easy to tell the Le Amis apart. It is also unusual for keeping the Prouvaires final end as well as well as Enjolras' inner conflict when he shoots the artillery sergeant.

[Errata]

Wretches & Jabberers on Netflix Streaming. A documentary on some people with severe autism who can't communicate verbally basically at all, but later in life learned to hunt and peck type on keyboards. They can type in complete sentences expressing complex thoughts, even when their bodies are flailing uncontrollably. So they are of average or even above average intelligence, but until recently there would be no outward indication of that. They travel around the world meeting people in other countries similar to them.

[crocoduck_hunter]

They actually type by themselves? I've heard of the "assisted typing" where it looks a lot like the person who's supposedly assisting the autistic kid is actually writing the message, but not of anyone with severe enough autism that they couldn't communicate normally using a keyboard before.

[Brad from Georgia]

That's "facilitated communication." It has never been verified by double-blind testing. Paul Offit's book Autism's False Prophets is mostly about anti-vaccination claims, but he does review the literature on facilitated communication and shows that the autistic children are not actually communicating--their helpers are.

[Errata]

These people are typing on their own.

[Errata]

Then again, looking it up, maybe it is just facilitated communication. If so, then they are using editing and camera tricks to present it in a misleading light. There appear to be many times when they are typing and their assistant isn't touching them, but if the filmmaker is a pseudoscience proponent it wouldn't be hard to edit it to look that way. They were pretty vague about some important details that you might expect a documentary to cover.

[DrRocket]

Saw "The A Team" last night. You know what? I wasn't really expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised to find it was a better movie than I thought it would be, and fairly entertaining.

[kit_n_caboodle]

I finally watched Looper the other night. Violent and science fictiony! My favourite things! But Joseph Gordon Levitt's lip prosthesis was so disturbing and distracting.

[Hero_Mike]

I watched "The Hobbit" last night on an IMAX 3D screen, and saw the 9-minute Star Trek preview. Today I recommended to my boss to see it just for the Trek trailer, which isn't available elsewhere. Not to give too much away, but I flinched (twice!) during the Trek preview when stuff was coming right at me, right out of the screen. I hadn't really flinched in any 3D movie before that. It was just that good...

[Embra]

Back to the Future was on telly last night, so I watched it with my mum. I was going to watch The Castle in honour of Australia day, but we got sucked in!

The films stands up really well, I think. I can't believe that the tension is still so effective even though I've seen it about 10 times and know exactly what happens: I'm still going "Oh no! The cable! Doc!"

[Errata]

Originally Posted by Embra

Back to the Future was on telly last night, so I watched it with my mum.

There's a funny blog about the novelization of that movie: http://btothef.tumblr.com/

Apparently it was written before the movie came out by someone who had never seen it, based on an early draft of the screenplay. Some major plot points had changed for the better since then. Lots of unrealistic characters, dialogue, and situations. For example, at one point apparently Marty gets out of detention by slingshotting a piece of gum and a match under the fire alarm and then remotely igniting it with a magnifying glass.

[inkrose115]

Originally Posted by Embra

Back to the Future was on telly last night, so I watched it with my mum. I was going to watch The Castle in honour of Australia day, but we got sucked in!

The films stands up really well, I think. I can't believe that the tension is still so effective even though I've seen it about 10 times and know exactly what happens: I'm still going "Oh no! The cable! Doc!"

Rewatched it with my mom, who had never seen it. I guess I'd forgotten how good it was because I enjoyed it the second time around. Then the DVD decided to not work about halfway through. We were both very, very annoyed.