Timon/Pumbaa fan wrote:Well, that heated discussion in The Lion King thread made me want to watch The Lion King.
Still Disney's best movie. Fact.
Yeah I ended up watching it as well! Unfortunately, the more I watch the movie, the more I tend to get bored through it. It sucks because I really want to like the movie more.
TheSequelofDisney wrote:I am currently watching, but don't have the movie finished yet, Bend it like Beckham (sp?)
Finish it! It's one of the best movies of 2003, and beats the pants off the other big ethnic comedy of the time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Definately not as laugh-out-loud funny, but definately more revelatory.
The Top 10 Films of 2005:
1) Brokeback Mountain 2) The Squid and the Whale 3) Me And You And Everyone We Know 4) The New World 5) A History of Violence 6) Match Point 7) Munich 8.) Crash 9) Wallace and Gromit 10) Pride & Prejudice
TheSequelofDisney wrote:I am currently watching, but don't have the movie finished yet, Bend it like Beckham (sp?)
Finish it! It's one of the best movies of 2003, and beats the pants off the other big ethnic comedy of the time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Definately not as laugh-out-loud funny, but definately more revelatory.
I did, and it was quite good. I thought that one part when Jules mom thought that Jess was a lesbo was hilarious! And then she said that she didn't have anything against people being lesbo, right after she made a big fit about all of it!
Many films viewed on this rainy weekend in Sydney. Strap yourselves in, it’s a crazy and eclectic ride!
Viewed 3 June 2006:
The Piano Teacher (2001 – France): I’d only seen one other Michael Haneke film, and that is Hidden (“reviewed” over in the screening log thread). He is known for ‘shocking’ the audience, but also for giving them something to ponder. This film, made a few years prior to Hidden, examines the cold and ‘unloving’ world of Isabelle Huppert’s Erika. She is a piano teacher living under the roof of her domineering mother, and is romantically pursued by a talented student. She struggles to relate to the world, only doing so through masochism and self-mutilation. Haneke both shocks the audience with these acts – which including watching graphic porn, voyeurism and the aforementioned self-mutilation in an uncomfortable position – yet simultaneously garners sympathy for an otherwise ‘cold fish’ of a character. Her inability to connect with her student in the ‘normal’ romantic sense he desires, and her inability to handle the rough love she thinks she wants, makes her one of cinemas most complex characters of recent years. The open-ended finale leaves us, as usual, with much to ponder. Rating: A-
Jaws – The Revenge (1987 - USA): I was incredibly disappointed with this. I knew it would be bad, but it wasn’t as bad as I was hoping it would be. The plot – in which the shark is now pursuing the Brody family around the world, so they move to an island (!) to escape – is laughable, but aside from the odd bit of terrible dialogue, it isn’t bad enough to be hilarious. For a film to be truly bad, it has to have no redeeming features, and just be boring. I consider unintentional comedy to be a redeeming feature. This is a truly bad film. Rating: C
Viewed 4 June 2006:
City of God (2002 – Brazil): From trash to treasure this weekend! This eye-opener about life on the street of Rio de Janeiro is most definitely one of the strongest films I’ve seen in recent memory. Balancing an incredibly harrowing narrative – in which children kill and are killed simply to survive on the streets – with the slick editing and camerawork that has defined filmmaking in the 1990s/2000s, director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) relates this depressingly true story in a way that is accessible to global audiences. The real achievement here, given the subject matter, is making this entertaining. A+ material!
Happiness (1998 – USA): Been meaning to see this one for a while, and anticipation certainly didn’t kill anything for me. A black a comedy as black comedies come, it is equal parts ‘squirm’ and ‘laugh’. Like recent films such as Me and You and Everyone We Know, it deals with sensitive issues frankly and in a non-judgemental way. Take any scene in which paedophile Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker) is talking to his son, or Camryn Manheim casually sharing her secret with Philip Seymour Hoffman over an ice-cream sundae. Also, has one of the best closing lines since Some Like it Hot! Priceless! Another A+ for me! Duck Soup (1933 – USA): Ah, the Marx Brothers. It is amazing this flopped in its day, because it still feels largely fresh. Compare it with other American ‘farces’ of recent memory – Scary/Not Another Teen/Date Movies – and it looks even better. Rapid-fire jokes mean there are more jokes here than the last 4 Scary Movies combined, and while the odd one misses or may feel a little hokey, it hits more often than misses. The ‘three hat routine’ and ‘mirror gag’ are comedy gold. Just what the doctor ordered on a rainy and cold Sunday night.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982 – USA): Had time for another ‘classic’ before we retired for the evening, and a game of ‘spot the future celebrity’ was a good wet-weather game. Having never seen this 1980s gem before, I was a little leery about whether or not it would hold up 25 years on. The fact that it was very frank about sex and other teen issues – and was written by Cameron Crowe when he was still writing a decent film and not using Tom Cruise – meant that this held up incredibly well, although it didn’t always strike gold. Still, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which I also saw for the first time this year, it is a surprisingly enduring comedy.
Porco Rosso (1992 - Japan): An incredibly enjoyable film, although I often felt that the animation wasn't quite up to scratch on this one. Some of the flights towards the horizon looked like a colour version of Plane Crazy, with the simple perspective being used. However, as a story it holds together pretty well, and I like the fact that we don't "see" Porco's ultimate visage at the end.
Repulsion (1965 - UK): One of the most disturbing films I have seen is Roman Polanski's The Tenant, and when this film was described as even more disturbing, I was excited at the prospect of seeing it. However, it was a little disappointing. The first part of the film plays like a fairly standard New Wave piece - black and white, recording life, lots of sounds of the street. It is only about a third of the way through the film, when the sexually-repressed Carole (Catherine Deneuve) is left alone in her sister's apartment, that the creepiness starts. Some of this is genuinely disturbing, as we can all relate on a base level to being left alone in a house full of imagined noises. Polanski's use of sound here is really unsettling. I suspect, however, that this has lost much of its impact over the last 40 years. Some parts are still genuine 'seat jumpers', but it is a little patchy overall. The Tenant left far more of an impact on me.
The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002 - USA): Based on the autobiography of failed actor turned producer Robert Evans, this fascinating documentary follows the meteoric rise (and spectacular fall) of the producer of such films as Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather and Chinatown. A fun narrative, byt Evans himself, could have been in danger of being one-sided, but Evans' harsh criticism of everyone including himself ensures that this remains a slightly more even portrayal of Hollywood.
Favorite Quotes:
"He's a square Benny... the kid's a square!!!"
"You're killing me Smalls!!!"
"Oh, I thought you said The Great Bambi..." "That *wimpy* deer!"
I actually thought this movie was quite enjoyable, which is going compeletly against whoever said that it wasn't good in the review. I guess I'm like, if it's Disney, it's fantastic/magnificent! I found that the movie still had the charm that the original had, and I thought it to be a very good movie. Hopefully, this sequel will have a Special Edition loaded with extras, including commentaries and trailers, because I didn't find anything wrong about this movie. Maybe this Special Edition will come out when Tinker Bell and Peter Pan are released in '07. Well, I'm hoping anyway. 9.5/10
Roger & Me (1989 - USA) (Viewed 6 June 2006): My introduction to Michael Moore was through the shows TV Nation, and later The Awful Truth, upon their first screenings in Australia. When Bowling for Columbine came out, I was respectively excited and delighted by the results. However, by the time Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, I had become jaded with his methods. He always picks the easy targets, and his solutions are over-simple to say the least. While I often agree with him, his desire to entertain often gets in the way of a good argument. This works well, I must say, at conveying issues to otherwise uncaring masses. So it was with this jaded eye that I returned to his first feature, Roger & Me. He employed these same tactics from the start, and hasn't really progressed. He does have a little more clout now, but I suspect I would have enjoyed this film more if I had seen it half a decade earlier. Love what it is saying, but I question the way it is said.
Roger and Me? That is grammatically incorrect. It should be Roger and I. Whoever came up with that title must be very stupid. Or was very bad in English class.
0/10?
