Now Showing - What We Watched - Page 249

The little boy was a pretty amazing actor for his age I thought

I thought he stole the second half of the movie.

Here Comes the Boom - 3/5 - OK - this movie wasn't a critical darling, it's not complex, the plot is exactly what you expect, but it's a got some good messages in it, and if your kids are old enough to watch simulated MMA fighting, it's a great family movie. Bas Rutter, not a great actor, overcomes his acting deficiencies with sheer enthusiasm, and Henry Winkler is just a joy to watch in his role.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1648179/?ref_=sr_1

Hansel and Gretel (Korean) - 4/5 - If you like Korean Cinema, with it's twists on conventional storylines this is a must watch. This is a visually stunning film with a unique twist on the Hansel and Gretel story. It's more of a dark fantasy than horror, with a disturbing conclusion.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1002567/

Lost in Translation - 5/5 - I love this film. Two people help each other deal with the disconnection in their lives and the environment they're in. It's Bill Murray's best work and the movie that brought Scarlett Johanssen into the limelight. The script, the improvisation, and the cinematography create a movie that I find hard to break from once I put it on. My only complaint, is the weak bluray transfer. I would love to see a Criterion edition of this film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/?ref_=sr_1

He had the evil look down, I was rooting for Bruce to off him to save his wife ...

+1, there were times I wasn't sure if he was acting or not. Come to think of it, I'm still not sure.

We watched 'Flight' Saturday night. I give it a 2.5/5 If it wasn't for the first 40 minutes, it'd get a 1.5/5. We were expecting more of a mysterious investigation of what happened. Rather than watch Denzel get drunk for 1.5 hours

Watched The Social Network.

I'd give a 4/5. AND it gave my sub quite a workout, for which I wan't prepared. Part of that could be that the new driver is breaking in....I was a little disapointed in it when I installed it and had cranked it up, but MAN! It did prompt me to go back and do a little tweaking. I had the butt kickers on and THAT was a surprise, too! I tweaked those as well. Felt like I really cut them back.

There is a scene at a club that NEEDS to be in the next demo disk for LFE.

This was my take also, I rented, but will buy before long... TV the last 2 nights, no time for movies. (Grammys & BSG last night)supper tonight so maybe Tuesday night.

Fair enough. Maybe it just wasn't what I was expecting.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659337/

The Perks of Being a Wallflower. 4/5

This is not an action movie. This is not a roaring comedy movie. (although we did laugh at times) This is not a chick flick. (although there is romance)

This movie is about a troubled freshman boy dealing with the demons of his adolescence while trying to find his place in high school / life. A very different kind of movie told in a very different kind of way.

Watched End of Watch
2.5/5 (amazon 4.0/5, imdb 7.7/10, rotten tomatoes 85%)
Too much foul language for me (326 uses of the F word).
Won't show this to the relatives due to the content, which is dark, brutally violent, and not for the feint of heart.
Uses (pretend) 'found footage' to viscerally convey the moments of crisis. Reasonably well written, and acted, etc.
Beginning with a messy chase scene, the film follows a few eventful days in the lives of two officers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña) returning to active duty after a shooting. Any hopes for a routine patrol, however, quickly fade when the two cross the path of a murderous gang leader named Big Evil. Conveys an extreme version of the day-to-day insanity that is a cop's lot in life.
Car chase, shootouts, dead bodies, appropriate rough humor/jokes.

Hotel Transylvania - 4/5

I really enjoyed this. It's silly, there are places that were awkward, but all in all, it was a fun little movie. I'll be adding this to my Halloween watch list. Yeah, while all the "normal" folks are watching SAW XIII and Hostel, I'll be watching cartoons

We watch cartoons too ;-) right now it's Monster House and Paranorman.

Paranorman is another good one. I haven't seen monster house. I'll have to check it out!

Didn't watch Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)

Watched Shenandoah (1965)
2/5 (amazon 4.6/5, imdb 7.2/10)
James Stewart
A nice moral film about a war ignorer family. A decent amount of plot and character.
In Shenandoah, Virginia, the widower farmer Charlie Anderson lives a peaceful life with his six sons - Jacob, James, Nathan, John, Henry and Boy, his daughter Jennie, and his daughter-in-law and James' wife Ann Anderson in his farm. Charlie does not let his sons to join the army to fight in the American Civil War that he considers that it is not their war. Meanwhile Jennie marries to her beloved Lieutenant Sam, but they do not have honeymoon since Sam has to go to the front. When Charlie's youngest son Boy is mistakenly taken prisoner by soldiers from the North. Charlie rides with his sons to rescue Boy, while James and Ann stays in the farm. But it is time of violence and war, and tragedy reaches the Anderson family.

Watched The Redhead From Wyoming (1953)
2/5 (amazon 3.7/5, imdb 5.7/10)
Maureen O'Hara
Maverick-branding -- any cow without a brand, or on the wrong property, may be branded (or rebranded) by anyone, according to the maverick-branding law.
Not much of a difference between that and cattle rustling, so governor hopfull hires a band of outlaws to maverick-brand every cow in the soon-to-be-state.
In Wyoming Territory, a range war is brewing between entrenched cattle barons and new settlers. Cattle king Reece Duncan is opposed by ambitious gambler Jim Averell, who imports his old flame, shapely saloon queen Kate Maxwell, and sets her up as an alternative cattle buyer. As matters build toward violence, Kate finds she's being taken advantage of. But her only potential ally in staving off carnage is seemingly mild-mannered sheriff Stan Blaine...who distrusts her.

Watched Unstoppable (2010)
3.8/5 (amazon 4.1/5, imdb 6.8.10, rotten tomatoes 86%, Decent Films B)
Finding the previous two cowboy films a tad slow,
and not in the mood for the wreck and kill of Dredd or Rambo 4,
but wanting a decent amount of action and adrenaline,
I pulled this 2010 film off the shelf and gave it a play.
A very good action movie.
This movie is based on a true story, some of it was filmed where it really happened.
A Tony Scott film.
A runaway train, transporting deadly, toxic chemicals, is barreling down on Scranton, Pennsylvania, and only two men can stop it: a veteran engineer (Denzel Washington) and a young conductor (Chris Pine). Thousands of lives hang in the balance as these ordinary heroes attempt to chase down one million tons of hurtling steel and prevent an epic disaster.
(Previous review)

Watched Countdown (1968)
3/5 (amazon 4.5/5, imdb 6.1/10)
James Caan
Two years before Armstrong set foot on the moon Robert Altman made this movie. It is not filled with special effects -- though the sequence on the moon is pretty good, and the on-location shots of Kennedy Space Center are nice from an historic perspective as well.
Although there's a long term plan to land a man on the moon around Apollo 11, it looks like the Russians are going to get there first so a plan to land an American on the moon before they have a return vehicle ready is made. NASA will send a habitat module up first, with 2 months of food and oxygen, and then an astronaut in a separate craft, and then every month and a half will send another habitat module up, until a way can be found to return the man safely to the Earth.
The habitat's radio directional transmitter breaks on landing, leaving only the red strobe light to find it.
spoiler: In the final few minutes of the film, the astronaut lands, without a clue as to where the habitat is, and lets his son's plastic mouse spin at the end of a string, the mouse tail giving him the direction to go. He passes the wrecked Russian craft, cosmonauts all dead. Will he find his habitat?



Watched Miracles (1986)
3/5 (imdb 5.1/10)
Tom Conti, Teri Garr, Christopher Lloyd
Light adventure, mostly comedy. Similar in style, but less popular, to Romancing The Stone (1984).
God (implied) does sixty or seventy miracles, from a breeze pushing a pebble having butterfly effects to actually throwing lightening bolts, to get child surgeon Roger (Conti) and his wife Jean (Garr) from their comfortable Manhattan, to save the life of a little girl in the jungle half a world away.
With one miracle after another steering them on their way, and unscratched survival at each stage only possible due to devine influence, the miracles leave a wave of of both good (a family saved from very evil bandits), and devine retribution.
In New York City, Roger -- a successful doctor -- and Jean, his equally successful lawyer wife, have just signed their divorce papers...
Among a remote tribe of Mayan Indians, a witch doctor is sentenced to death when he cannot cure the chief's daughter ...
In Mexico, two corrupt cops plan to frame two "gringos" as smugglers...
And by a set of miraculous coincidences, Roger, Jean, and a less than successful bank robber called Juan keep on bumping into each other ... in cars, planes, revolutions, boats.
In this film, every prayer (Even an "Oh God!") is answered, in such a way as to be unapparent to the beneficiary. Conversely, every use of you-know-Who's name in vain is swiftly punished in the same manner. Especially, note the prayer that opens the film and how it is eventually answered. Nothing flashy, no parting of the Red Sea or the sun standing still in the Heavens--just a deft touch to give the deserving a little help when needed.
Edited by BasementBob - 2/16/13 at 9:20am

I had no idea this movie even existed! I may have been better off that way from the looks of it

I'll agree with this! We really enjoyed it!

Just finished the remake of 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'. I liked the original better and couldn't figure the purpose of the remake?

Have you seen the extended versions of the originals? The added footage really makes a difference, especially in the third movie.

I did see all 3 originals, but not the extended versions.

Just finish Ice Age 3, the franchise is long in the tooth in my opinion.

Watched Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
(π / e) ^ ( π + e ) / 5 (amazon 4.1/5, imdb 4.3/10, rotten tomatoes 41%) [ that π is pronounced 'pie' ]
B-Movie at best, maybe a C-movie if there is such a thing, not-quite-horror not-quite-comedy-but-it-almost-is.
Staring Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley Jr., Joseph Bologna, Carol Kane, John Byner, Michael Richards (aka Kramer), Jeffrey Jones, Geena Davis.
Of those, Carol Kane was great, and Geena Davis probably has never looked better. Everyone else, well, they were in it.
Donald Gibb as the Wolfman, Dusko Valentic as the Twisted Man, Ksenia Prohaska as the Mummy, Joseph Bologna as the Mad Doctor, John Byner as Renu (basically somewhat between Dracula's Renfield and the traditional 'Yeth, marthter' hunchbacked Igor Frankenstein's Assistant), Petar Buntic as Frankenstein's Monster, and Inge Appelt as Madame Morovia the Gypsy Fortune Teller.
WANTED: Two thrill-seeking reporters, brains optional, looking to dig up the story of the century. For information call...
Tabloid reporters Jack Harrison (Jeff Goldblum) and Gil Turner (Ed Begley, Jr.) are sent to Transylvania with two choices: find the Frankenstein monster or find new jobs. But before the jumpy journalists can dig up their big story, they must first face the horrors of an extremely clumsy butler (Michael Richards), a nymphomaniac vampire (Geena Davis) and a semi-mad doctor (Joseph Bologna), as well as assorted mummies, werewolves and a town full of oddballs.
The movie's claim to fame is probably the ending, where we find out that the 'monster's are just normal citizens with assorted medical problems, suffering from a bit of politics and an HMO (health maintenance organization, health insurance).
Budget: under $3,000,000

Not Jeff Goldblum's best work (which would probably be The Fly (1986), possibly Independence Day (1996)), nor Ed Begley Jr.'s or Teresa Ganzel's.

Carol Kane as the crazy obsessively excessively-in-love wife -- played similarly to the role of Simka Dahblitz-Gravas wife of Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman), on the American television series Taxi.


Geena Davis as the horny Vampiress Odette





Didn't watch Transylvania 6-5000 (1963)
4/5
Bugs Bunny.
After getting lost on his vacation, Bugs ends up in the middle of Transylvania. He decides to get a room for the night in a nearby castle, which of course turns out to be home to a vampire. The bloodsucker is looking to make Bugs his next meal, but the bunny has a few tricks, as well as a few magic words, up his sleeve.
Edited by BasementBob - 2/16/13 at 10:04pm

Green Lantern - 3/5

This was not as bad as I was expecting. Not in the same league as Iron Man or Avengers, but I only checked AVS once during the movie. I was ready to give it the dreaded 2/5, but I realized that I will probably watch this again in my theater once it's finished. So it's at least good enough for a second viewing. For that alone it gets a 3/5. The characters are a little thin, the plot is unoriginal and felt phoned in, and the Green Lantern's constructs were not as "awesome" as I was hoping. Going into this, I had this feeling that the constructs would make or break it for me. If they were over the top and/or clever it would win me over, if they were poorly done I'd probably resort to checking for Bob's latest review (which is a gem this time, I might add ). Constructs turned out to be just ho-hum. In short, this movie is a fun ride if you don't expect too much out of it.

Peter Pan (1953) - 3/5

This movie has recently been re-released by Disney, and we picked it up for family movie night. For me it was amazing to get some perspective on how the social norms have changed in 60 years. There's no way this would have been rated G today. There's drinking, smoking, fighting, stereo typical representations of Native Americans, we see Tink's bloomers a handful of times, and there's a word or two that I'd prefer stay out of my son's vocabulary.

As far as the transfer goes, Blu-ray or not, it's hard to get past the look of 60 year old animation. It's not as polished as the CG stuff we see these days. I'll admit, I like my movies to "look" new. On top of that, the audio was all over the place. The songs were hard to understand (I still don't know why the red man is red). The "We Can Fly" song at the beginning sounded too soft and quiet compared to the dialog. The dialog, on the other hand, was very clear. It's difficult to describe, but imagine listening to the musical parts of the movie on an old (OLD) record player where the lyrics are almost drowned out my the white noise and then switching over to a CD for the dialog.

In spite of all that, or maybe because of it, I liked the movie. It's an old movie, with a simple story, and simple characters, but that's part of the charm.

In Bruges - 3/5 - Colin Farrell and Brenden Gleason play two hitmen hiding out in Bruges, Belgium until the heat dies off from a recent hit. Recommended for anyone that enjoys dark comedies. Excellent performances all around, Farrell especially shows nice range from goofy to melancholy. Absolutely lovely cinematography, good enough to make us want to go to Bruges.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780536/

The Tree of Life - 2/5 for story 5/5 for visuals and audio - This was a hard one to judge so I had to split the score. I don't know if I love this film and what Malick did or not. The visuals are beautiful as all Malick's movies are, I felt completely justified in my VT50 purchase and the time I spent learning to calibrate it. Jessica Chastain is a STAR. I cannot wait to watch her in more films. She put more raw emotion in one scene than most actresses put into their career. Brad Pitt was excellent as always, and Hunter McCracken as the young Jack actually made me think he could have been Sean Penn's younger self. The audio is an absolute treat, take the advice at the beginning of the disc and turn the volume up, some of the most effective yet unimposing surround I've heard.

However....either I simply didn't get the symbolism, or it was just too random and all over the place, especially the ending which just lost it for me. My other issue was the long Birth of the Universe sequence, it was amazing looking, but simply felt out of place in the narrative and seemed a bit self indulgent. I would have rather had 20 more minutes of the family.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/

Skyfall - 5/5 - Read Ralphs review. What a combination of the old Bond and the New. I want to give the team that mastered this Bluray a hug and a kiss.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/

The wife and I watched 'The Hurt Locker' for the first time on Sunday. I dug it but I found it to be lacking a bit of the usual character development I crave. The bar for me was set very high due to how often it was recommended to me, but, it just didn't hit that point. Not a bad movie at all, just didn't wow me.

Had 3-fer this weekend with the Monday Holiday....

First up, The Help. 5/5. And I don't do that very often. Excellent acting all the way around. Not really for kids unless you want to teach them what race relations were like in the late 50, early 60s. 'Nuff said, I don't want to start a discussion down the the wrong path.

Second, Hall Pass. 3/5 only becase it had a better message than most in this genre. Definitely made us laugh.

Lastly, Ted. 4/5. We found it VERY funny, but in the "you have to appreciate Seth MacFarlane" kind of way. Which I do.


I saw this earlier and LOVED it. It's one of those that you have stick with for the payoff. And you can't be interupted all the time, either. It's a "sit down and watch it" movie.

It's one I'll definitely watch again, I'm sure there's things I missed that may raise my feelings about it.

Over the weekend:

Played The Princess Bride (1987) - 4/5, such a classic, I could turn around and watch / play it again tomorrow and still enjoy it. Great casting / dialogue.

Watched Watchmen (2009) - 4/5 - I had put off watching this for a while because its three hours long, and I find it hard to find that much contiguous time to watch a movie. Interesting mixture of genres that managed to work for me, I think they could have used the whole Dr. Manhattan plot as an entire movie.

Watched Skyfall (2012) - 4.5/5 - not much to dislike really, I like Daniel Craig as Bond (especially as relief from his predecessor who I don't care for at all), the plot was interesting, and the A/V quality was great - found myself several times entranced just looking at the picture quality and then realizing I hadn't been paying attention to the story and had to ask my wife what I missed. I take off 1/2 a point for the silly tech points pulling me away from suspension of disbelief.
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Watched The Man with Iron Fists (2012) - 3.75/5 - 2.5/5 for plot / acting, 5/5 for audio/video - boy this was a bassfest, really nice subwoofer workout. Pretty over the top in terms of gore; didn't like the fit of rap music over martial arts movie, seemed really strange - but its Tarantino, so... but I'll add it to the collection just because of the demo worthy A/V.

Premium Rush - Netflix DVD - This a a movie about a "gang" of bike messengers taking on the streets of NYC, a crooked NYPD cop, and the Chinese Mob sort of. Overall I really liked the movie, but it was (for me) all over the place and the pacing of the movie was again (for me) weird. I really did like the chase scenes through the traffic in NYC but yet in some cases it was unrealistic for the car (from what I understand traffic is a real ^%$@& in NYC) so for a car even to be able to keep up with the bike was less than plausible. They did have the opportunity to showcase some awesome bike stunts, but fell short on that. Worth a rent you won't feel that you wasted your time. 3/5

Regards,

RTROSE