The Official What was the last movie you saw??

No, haha, it's an actual movie. We watched it because of the name, obviously.

 

I saw Drive. Before I didnt know why the movie was getting alot of praise. I thought "the trailers make it look just like every other fast and the furious- esque movie"
I was dead wrong. It starts off slowly but thats part of the point, its not just an action movie, it is much more than that.

 

Safe House

Nothing new really, but the acting was great imo. The pace kind of feels like a Bourne movie as well. 7.5/10

 

It's Ryan Gosling day for me and Mrs. VO.

Up first, The Ides of March. A very good, albeit somewhat cynical, look at the political process. Really enjoyable, although depressing and somewhat timely given all the primary madness being covered by the major news networks. Awesome cast too, with Clooney, Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Paul Giamatti. I'd give it a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

Next, Drive. Wow. All I can really say is wow. Just saw this today on Blu-Ray. I have to agree with Frumundah completely. I was expecting GTA. It's definitely GTA, but even more gritty than the games. Pretty much a flawless movie IMO, from the acting, to the cinematography, to the soundtrack. Wikipedia classifies it as an "Arthouse Action" film, and that seems like a pretty accurate description. 5 of 5 stars, and easily the best movie I've seen this year.

I also saw Star Wars in 3D yesterday. The highlight was going to a Cinema Suites and enjoying lunch while doing so. The Podrace is still the highlight, and the last act works pretty well with the new effects, but the movie still lags a bit on Coruscent. The Nemodians (bad Asian stereotype aliens) now blink, and digital Yoda is marked improvement, but I'm fairly certain these were already on the Blu-Ray release last fall.

 

We have a young baby, so I see movies late.

Midnight in Paris, 4/5. You have to love the 1920s artists and writers however.
The Help, 4/5. Fine movie, but not the game changer it's advertised as.

I'd be excited to all of your reviews on Chronicle (in theaters). It is supposed to be fun.

 

Makes it gold for me. Definitely will go see then.

 

I guess we are on sort of an independent film kick.

Watched Take Shelter last night. Powerful film, Michael Shannon turns in a monster performance. It's a quiet film, but always tense and filled with this slight sense of uneasiness. Probably not a film for everyone given the depressing subject matter, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, as it hit home and felt very real. Had the movie done better at the box office I have no doubt it would be up for award consideration. Shannon turns in one of the better performances I've seen in recent history and is getting jobbed by not being in consideration for Best Actor. 4.5 of 5 stars.

 

I saw Chronicle today and was extremely impressed.

Definitely in the running for surprise of the year (even if it's just February). The acting and action scenes were great.

 

Based on what FF and VO said about Drive, I checked it out. Really good movie. Gosling is better in this movie than I've seen in his others. Not bad for a Mickey Mouse kid. It's quite a gripping story and you'd have to wonder if they'll do a prequel.

I also saw We Need To Talk About Kevin. Another good movie. It's about a mother coping after her son commits a mass murder. It's quite a dark tale.

 

Saw The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and loved it. Thought Rooney Mara was fabulous , a lot of underlying emotion , very gritty , loved the setting in Sweden , well acted film . I also liked how it ended and while not all neatly wrapped up it balanced conclusion but obviously set the stage for the next movie. A bit of a warning there are some graphic edgy scenes and you or your viewing partner have to be ok with that. I see a lot of movies with my daughter who is 20 and she really thought it was a great movie but has always been mature and doesn't feel awkward seeing scenes like that with her dad.

A few other ones mentioned that we saw were Midnight In Paris which was wonderful , loved the ambiance and the feel of the film . The scenes were visually very appealing.

The Help had a fantastic cast and while the theme was kind of sugared , it was very enjoyable. Particularly loved the clothes , the hair , the cars , pin point on the era imo. Jessica Chastain remided me of someone I know well , though not nearly as ditzy , but as sexy.

My daughter's favourite film that we saw over the last half year or so was 50 / 50 . I really liked it too , but it wasn't in my top 3 or 5 . My son was in a film with JGL ( minor , extra part but he got to know him as he helped him with skating as well and took him to some live music venues.

Like VO , really like the 2 Ryan Gosling films , truly thought Drive was great and thought he was overlooked by not getting a nomination . Also liked the comedic Crazy Stupid Love .

Hugo was again visually strong and liked it a lot but thought it was not as brilliant as some of the praise made it out to be. Honestly I prefer movies not in 3D. Still really good and if you have kids I do definitely recommend it.

Gary Oldman was terrific in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , if you like thrillers , espionage , MI 6 you will really enjoy this film .

The Descendants was good not great for me , not sure if got the right blend of drama/comedy , to be better than just good . Still worth viewing though.

Anyway the film I thought was the best was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo , and actually plan to see it again this weekend.

 

Projext X. Absolutely hilarious

 

A better superbad

 

Doesn't look to have much of a storyline, though.

 

It doesnt. Doesnt really need it really

 

So I saw Project X. Aside from lots of boobies, it disappointed.

 

Saw Project X night it came out.

Whole lot of nothing. Couple of Laugh Out Loud moments, but overall....it's just a bigass party. I wasn't really fond of Superbad, but this is much worse than Superbad.

 

This could possibly be the greatest movie ever produced in the '70's...Why have I never heard of this before?

Sweet Sugar 1972

[video]http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=99b_1331780158[/video]

"...38 caliber kittens! Spitting death, as they claw their way to freedom..."

 

It tried to get all mushy at the end too. Didn't make sense.

 

I saw Project X back in the late 80's but it was Matthew Broderick trying to save a bunch of chimps used for experiments by the govt.

 

Zombieland......Emma Stone looked sexy as all get out with a shotgun in her hand.....want to smash

 

Great movie....and 100% agree on Emma Stone in the movie.

 

21 Jump Street

 

Just saw The Hunger Games, thought it was excellent. Really want to read the books now.

I think it ought to get Jennifer Lawrence some awards cred, but it's so far out of season for that kind of stuff so who knows.

 

I thought Hunger Games was very good but not great. Actually, I would say the same about the books, although I enjoyed the books a little more. I put both the books and the movie below the Harry Potter series, which I felt were excellent.

 

Books are always better. I only read the first book of Hunger Games but I would agree it's definitely not on par with Harry Potter. For one I'm not in love with the first person POV the story is told from. The characters are also not done quite as well. But it's still pretty good. I probably won't see the movie until it goes to video.

 

If you see the Japanese movie Battle Royale, made from a novel of the same name in 2000, there are quite a few similarities with the story Hunger Games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)

 

I thought Hunger Games was the biggest pile of **** I've seen in quite some time.

Spoiler

It annoyed me that a supposed great hunter with a bow wouldn't take the opportunity to shoot the others from a distance while in cover. Any bad *** hunter/tracker with a bow could have ended that game in 1 day, especially when half of the kids stayed together and made tons of noise.

I won't be going back to watch the sequels

 

I saw My Week With Marilyn. Michelle Williams did a great job playing Marilyn Monroe.
Its a pretty sad movie actually, since there is a focus on Monroe's issues with addiction and her insecurities.

There may be a sequel

I'm not sure the movie needs a sequel, and considering the ending is a liitle ambiguous, I'm not sure where they could go with it.

 

It's the lack of attention to detail or continuity right there that makes movies like this one fall flat on their face for a male audience.

Obv most women don't care about things like that, but as a man it's impossible to take something serious after a serious misstep like that.

 

I was looking forward to the movie b/c I wanted to see how they would would visually interpret some of the things that I had imagined. The problem with the movie was that much of book was about her internal monologue. She was very much the stoic character the actress portrayed on the outside, but you knew what she was thinking. If the actress had been more emotive to let you know what she was thinking then she wouldn't have been true to the character as the other characters saw her. Short of constant voice over or narrative I didn't see a way around that.

 

Spoiler

In the book you got a clearer picture that it wouldn't have been that easy. I did think she could have done that over several days, but the game maker kept messing with the participants to keep things even and moves things along and there were characters who stayed hidden and weren't in the open. I did think that taking out the leader would have been possible. But you got the impression that if she took out the main guy that she wouldn't have been able to escape all the others in the subsequent chase since she wasn't faster or better at hiding. Her range or head start would be a limited advantage since there were others with ranged weapons (knives, spears, trident) that would put her in danger once her shot revealed her. I think my plan would have been to set multiple traps along a planned route, take out the main threat and then run along that route (avoiding my traps) and hoping the traps took out a few others. Once a few were taken out the remaining, hopefully weaker opponents would have disbanded. I will see the sequels, but for me it was more about the coming rebellion vs. the entrenched govt. than it was about the main character or the love triangle.

 

This is about where I am at with this series. My wife read the book series, really liked it, and then bought me the first installment to read. It's certainly a compelling, albeit somewhat easy and predictable read ... I can certainly understand why they felt the need to turn it into a film series. For me, the novels have a cool concept but just didn't go far enough. I felt like the characters came across as a little flat and that there was a lot going on that didn't get explored. That may have been a creative choice by the author but I thought it was a misstep.

We finally got a chance to see the movie yesterday, and I came away feeling it was slightly above average. I feel like there were things in the book that were missed (that's always the case in film adaptations), but restructures and changes to tone that didn't really capture what I read in the novel. If anyone wants more information on what I'm alluding to let me know and I'll add further thoughts.

Those of you on the fence about this movie be warned; this is a chick flick / love triangle masquerading as an action flick. If you go in expecting a lot of violence and cool action sequences, prepare to be let down a bit. The director instead chooses to use a lot of quick cuts, shaky cam, and zooms to capture the action. It's sort of messy and I didn't really care for it. That may have been a creative choice by the director, but I thought it was a misstep.

If you've never read the books some of the dialogue won't make a lot of sense. I'm hoping that the studio goes for a LOTR-style Extended edition. The Hunger Games already clocks in at a lengthy 2 hours and 22 minutes but I felt like they could have easily added 45 minutes to it to help suss out some of the lost details. I felt like the film was in a hurry to pack everything in as quickly as possible - leaving us unable to really catch up or become emotionally invested in what was happening onscreen.

 

I too was wondering this as the book is not so much a novel on the state of the world, but almost a character study on Katniss Everdean.

Spoiler

This film wouldn't have worked with a constant voice over. I like how they used the commentators and control room to help explain what was going on, though obviously you lose the "are they really messing with her or is it in her head" vibe that you get reading the novel. It was a clever editing choice and one that worked, though obviously it wasn't perfect.

 

The thing I dislike about books to movies is that people do not understand that everything from the book cannot be included.

The attention to detail stuff is difficult to do with certain movies because there simply is not enough time.

 

Wife took me to Hunger Games and I didn't like it. I didn't read the books and based on the movie itself it was a very forgetful one. As a movie, there were themes that they could have delved into such as morality and the human condition but it didn't. It lacked substance, it was shallow, it was a superficial look at survival and a teenage love story. It targeted the Twilight demographic.

The characters had no depth. Either that or the actors failed. In the end I really didn't care what happened to the characters. The concept was interesting but it didn't go antwhere for me. It could have had a lot of potential if the characters were developed better and the story had some thought provoking issues.

The fight scenes weren't fight scenes. The action was mainly off screen or using too much close up. Poor editing or directing. The movie's violence was too toned down for me just to get a PG rating. Tarantino would have aced this movie! LOL

 

I like how this has turned into a Hunger Games thread. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I don't know if I will now after reading some of the comments. However I read the first two and enjoyed them so much that I put off the final book to read a Stephen King novel. I agree with a lot of you guys that the characters weren't developed enough, and a lot of the complaints I feel are due to the fact that this was aimed at the teen demographic. While it's not my cup of tea, I do have to give the books credit that it has caused kids to put down the remote and read a book. However why is it that teen novels feel the desire to create a Team Edward/Team Jacob love triangle? It's annoying and insulting.

 

I wouldn't call it surprising that there is discussion about the current #1 movie in a movie thread. As for the team edward/team jacob thing, my buddy and I were discussing this the other day. We came to the conclusion/realization that having to choose between two guys is a predominant female fantasy. Being desired/loved by two attractive males and the angst about who to choose and not wanting to hurt the feelings of the one you don't choose seems to be the most fertile field of discussion for many women.

 

I saw Huger Games. I thought it was a fine movie. I think they could have done more to care about the kids, however I was entertained.

I have to say it was 100% better than the first Harry Potter movie which still think is a terrible movie. As someone who didn't read either book I think Hunger Games did a better job of telling an interesting story.

 

One thing I enjoy about the love triangle in the Hunger Games is that it made sense with the situation. She had a boyfriend at home, however due to the situation for her survival she had to create a love story to get sponsors. However anytime you go through something like that with someone you will create a bond. Plus the fact that the girl is kind of a bad a** where I can see guys being interested in her and not some stupid girl who just makes stupid faces.