What Movie Did You Just Watch? - Shh! It's Starting!

[Mooky]

How To Deal – you see one "teen angst" movie and you've seen them all. The cast was decent, put the story was beyond tired. Few chuckles here and there.

Aww...I love this movie! It's more than a "teen angst" movie, IMO- she gets less angsty and softens up as time goes on!

Indeed she does. It's just that I've seen a story like that a million times before. For what it's worth, the leads (especially Mandy ) did a great job, and Allison Janney was fantastic as usual.

[PeterPanfan]

The Cutting Edge - We watched this in school, for whatever reason. I've seen the second and third films, both with Christy Carlson Romano, but I definitely liked the first the most out of the three, considering it was theatrical as opposed to made-for-tv. It was nice to see what Moira Kelly looked like at a young age, since I've only seen her as Karen on One Tree Hill, plus it's always nice to see Terry O' Quinn on screen.

[DaveWadding]

Inglorious Basterds - 8.3/10 - As someone who loves Tarantino, I had really high hopes for this movie (like I always do) and again I was let down. I just don't think he has another Pulp Fiction in the tank.

I enjoyed it certainly, but there was definitely not enough screen time for the Basterds and their Natzi killin exploits. Tarantino did one thing I really appreciated though, and that was having the movie that mostly involves French/German speakers in Paris speaking actual French/German with subs. That really bugs me in other movies.

[PeterPanfan]

Heathers - I LOVED this movie! I had seen it before at a sorta-young age for some reason, but only remembered when JB and Veronica were chasing the two jocks through the woods scene. Anyway, Winona Ryder wasn't as annoying as usual, but Christian Slater really creeped me out. I guess that was the intent, though. Shannen Doherty gave a good performance as the new HBIC Heather Duke. Heather Chandler definitely had the funniest lines, such as the iconic 'chainsaw' one, and Heather McNamara was funny as well. Definitely a great film. I'm excited for the new musical, TV series, and potential sequel, which Winona and Christain have agreed to do.

[SmartAleck25]

Ratatouille- 10/10
Another amazing Pixar masterpiece. The visuals were amazing! I don't get why people here don't like this movie. I don't see anything cold about it.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan- 10/10
A massive improvement over the lengthy Motion Picture. A much more engaging story, characters, and bittersweet ending. This might be the best Star Trek movie ever! There is only one thing that bothers me... Why do they call Lieutenant Saavik MR. Saavik when she's a girl?

[blackcauldron85]

Atonement- I liked it. It made me cry, which is always welcome when I watch a film. A-?

[PeterPanfan]

Gone in the Night - This was technically a four-hour miniseries, but I'm counting it as a movie. Shannen Doherty gave the performance of her career, well kinda, in this TV-movie. Based on a very true story, a new couple faces trauma when their young daughter is abducted and killed in the night. Their other child, a son, is traumatized, along with the neighborhood. Things get really bad when the police blame the murder on the parents of the young girl, when the real killer is still on the loose. Like I said before, this is a factual story, even the names are still in tact. At the end of the broadcast, the real parents of the murdered girl come on screen asking people to call a number if they have any leads on any kind of child abduction case. Recommended.

[carolinakid]

Only When I Laugh with Marsha Mason & Kristy McNichol....I've always wanted to see this so I DVRed it on TCM on Monday.

[Goliath]

Ratatouille- 10/10
Another amazing Pixar masterpiece. The visuals were amazing! I don't get why people here don't like this movie. I don't see anything cold about it.

I think it's Pixar's best. (Although I haven't seen Up or Wall-E yet.)

[Siren]

About to watch Zombieland I saw this one in the theaters, because there was nothing else to see really. Turned out to be one of the best blind-buys on movie tickets I ever experienced. The movie had just enough humor, horror, gore, and quirkiness to keep me entertained and laughing. The cameo was by far the best Also loved all the names for them, Columbus, Tallahassee, lol

[BelleGirl]

The Princess and the Frog Finally! I tremendously enjoyed it. (though I did not laugh out loud at the jokes like most people in the audience)Admittedly a little bit too much slapstick for my taste and only two or three memorable songs, but what a charming story and characters! Tiana and Naveen are among the best Disney couples and the 'sidekicks' Louis and Ray are actually loveable instead of annoying.

Much as I like Up I'm rooting for TPatF to win the Oscar for best animated feature now.

Water quite something else. The movie tells about the fate of widows in India in 1938. An 8 year old girl becomes a widow (!), her hair is cut and shaven and she is sent away from home to live in poverty among other widows, because a Hindu religious law tells a widow should remain pure and perform chasity for the rest of her life. Enter a young man who is follower of Gandhi and has modern ideas. He proposes to marry one of the widows, which is a shock to the system (imagine a widow remarrying!). I won't reveal the rest of the story, but at the end credits a text reveals the sad fact that the fate of Hindu widows still is practically the same in 2001.

[Margos]

Tinker Bell - You know, with the whole "Rapunzel" controversy, the question of whether or not CG can be "painterly" comes up constantly. And I find myself wondering why no one ever points to Tinker Bell as proof that it can be done. Is the character animation perfect? Well, no, not quite. But the backgrounds are lush and gorgeous in a way that I personally haven't seen in CG outside of this series. It's purely magical and beautiful, and I can't get enough of this movie. Now, I do prefer the sequel plot-wise. But I feel that the music is better in the original, which also benefits from the larger presences of Silvermist, Rosetta, Fawn, Iridessa, and (last but certainly not least) Vidia. I honestly don't think I can wait until Autumn for more Disney Fairies goodness!

[SmartAleck25]

Star Trek lll: The Search For Spock- 7/10
You know, this movie really isn't as bad as people say. Sure, it drags on a bit, but there' still a sense of Trekiness in there. I felt Kirk' grief and resent throughout the film. Search is almost up there with Khan, with just a few minor problems: it does drag on a bit, the new Saavik comes off as rather unsettling to me, David and McCoy are hardly given any screen time, and Kirk and the villain's stick-whacking and little grapple on that cliff looked a lot like Snow White, LOTR, and Lion King all mixed together (lava beneath a cliff, villain stands on edge, the edge cracks, falls off, hangs on by a smidgen, hero says, "Give me your hand!", villain takes it, tries again to defeat hero, both fall off, hero barely grabs on to edge, pulls himself up); though I guess that only Snow White has a claim seeming as how LOTR and Lion King came after. I don't believe in the odd-numbered=terrible concept, it seems. Motion Picture is still the worst out there for the Original Series.

[PixarFan2006]

Lilo & Stitch (2002) - 8/10 - Probably one of my top ten DACs. It's just not like any other Disney film. Ever since I first saw it on DVD back in 2002, Stitch has become one of my all-time favorite Disney characters.

[PeterPanfan]

The Exorcist - Very creepy and disturbing. It was pretty scary, although some of it was so cheesy it was hard not to laugh. Linda Blair gave a horrifying performance, though, from what I understand it was another actress that played the possessed Reagen? Anyway, great film that needs to be seen by any so-called film fan.

Trick 'r' Treat - Okay, I admit it. I rented it because of Anna Paquin. She wasn't in it much, but it was a great movie! I was also pleasently surprised to see Tahmoh Penikett from Dollhouse in it! He played a minor character, but still. Some parts were scary, but the whole feel of the film was very darkly humorous. Recommended.

Ginger Snaps - I loved it! Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins gave knock-out performances, especially Perkins as the two close sisters, one of which is affected by a werewolf bite. There's a sequel and a prequel, apparentley, but I don't know if they're worth checking out. Any help?

[Escapay]

There is only one thing that bothers me... Why do they call Lieutenant Saavik MR. Saavik when she's a girl?

It's a form of respect in the military (at least Trek's equivalent of the military). All officers are officers, not men, not women.

the new Saavik comes off as rather unsettling to me

My problem with Robin Curtis' Saavik is she's too Vulcan. Saavik from TWOK was initially to be half-Vulcan and half-Romulan, and thus always at odds with trying to hold her emotions in whilst retaining the logic and discipline of a Vulcan. (The scene establishing this was cut from the movie, but it's in the novelisation, I think). Since it's more or less assumed in the final film that she's full Vulcan, Curtis carried that on in TSFS, which did the character a great disservice, IMO.

I don't believe in the odd-numbered=terrible concept, it seems.

I don't either. I generally just believe even-numbered = better than odd-numbered.

But seriously, I love a lot of what the odd-numbered films bring to the series (except Generations, which is my least favourite of the Trek films), it's just that the even-numbered films generally do it better. The Motion Picture is the slowest-moving, but also arguably the best story of the films (odd-numbered or not), and The Search For Spock, while good in its own right, really just serves as the bridge between The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home. For the longest time, it was my favourite of the Trek films, though I've grown less interested in it over time. The Final Frontier really is the mess of the bunch (in all the Trek films and especially in the original crew films) but when you just sit down and watch it in the mind set of "Okay, give me a Trek that's just a lot of fun even if it doesn't make sense!", it's pretty good. Insurrection is highly underrated and I think it suffers mainly from being too small a plot for a movie. It's the biggest "extended television episode" Trek movie ever, but it is still quite good regardless.

Motion Picture is still the worst out there for the Original Series.

Just wait until The Final Frontier.

Anyway, to add to movies just watched...

Café Metropole (1937) - Tyrone Power is young American Alexander Brown, who ends up in a huge debt to Adolphe Menjou's Monsieur Victor, the owner of Café Metropole in Paris. In order to pay off the debt, he agrees to pose as a Russian Prince in order to woo an American Heiress, Laura Ridgeway (played by Loretta Young). However, he falls in love with her and wishes to stop the charade. It also doesn't help that the Russian Prince he's impersonating turns up in Paris as well!

The movie is one of Power's earliest (and his third with Loretta Young) and it really is quite hokey, though still an enjoyable romcom. Of the five Power/Young movies, only three are on DVD (their first, Ladies in Love, and their last, Suez, are not). Of the three I have seen (this, Love is News, and Second Honeymoon), I enjoyed this one the most.

The a/v on the DVD is quite good for its age, but (understandably) there aren't much in the special features, just two deleted dance numbers (with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson) and three galleries. No trailer. Then again, it's part of the Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection, which already has a pretty good 15-minute Power/Young featurette featured on another disc (with Love is News).

Tyrone Power's Acting: 7/10
Loretta Young's Acting: 8/10
Overall Movie: 6.5/10
DVD: 6/10

albert

[Lazario]

I had some idea that when I bought this movie, I was getting into something unusual. I've known about it since at least 2001 and just because of the cover alone, was dying to see it. I had to see it! It was a mission. I mean- that cover is basically exactly what you get. I promise you, if you have the guts to watch this movie, you will see endless montages of him killing people, her killing people, both of them killing people together. Anyway, in case you also hadn't noticed, it's a total joke. Comedy, spoof- that sort of thing. For the first 45 minutes solid, I was in shock. For a multitude of reasons. One being how utterly unsophisticated this was. I mean: we're talking shot-on-video stuff here. The quality of the photography is actually quite good but only one cast member here I think could be mistaken for being a professional actor. It looks like something some friends got together and shot in their houses and on the streets and whatever business would let them. And in that respect, this movie could never hope to be better than the once overrated but now underrated Dead Next Door or the amazing There's Nothing Out There.

Another reason I was in shock was because I was having absolutely no fun with it. Think about it: there's a lot of novelty in a movie where a man and a woman meet, are both serial killers, and on a date tell each other they're serial killers, and like each other so much that they won't kill each other- they'll just continue to pick up victims and dispatch them. There is a lot of potential for great comedy here. But for a long time, this is just a dreary, cheap series of lame, sleazy kill scenes. Stopping only occasionally for an Elvis reference (which Jim Wynorski does better anyway). I just had to say - and I did, several times in that first hour - Troma's The Newlydeads was better than this. I also couldn't get past the fact that she was fairly attractive (sort of a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald) but that this guy had just about zero charisma. I just couldn't believe that she would have any interest in him (I was definitely recalling the outrageously stupid Maniac in my head). And it takes at least 55 minutes, but that feeling eventually dulls and the movie does get better.

It's a long wait and you may lose your mind, but in that last half hour, the movie got... well... clever. When they decide to get married and they get tired of killing and try to settle down into a life without it. That's when things get fun. Which shows me that these guys actually have a real flair with comedy. And I think they do. The more they make jokes about this being an actual movie and not pretending it's realistic- the better it is. And they don't just knock down that 4th wall- they blast it with dynamite! They push boom mics out of their faces, they talk directly to the camera, the camera pans over to show the movie crew and the blood pumpers, they stop a scene completely to "give a message" to the audience, and base entire scenes around discussing character motivations. Which I was very grateful for. I was ready to call a character on his hypocrasy and the pointlessness of the "she liked grapes" shower murder at the beginning- but the wife character (Debi Thibeault) did it for me! The more you watch the killers do what they do, the more boring it is. The more you watch them talk about it, the more originality the movie has.

If you can actually even call it a movie anymore. I still say- watch at your own risk. You won't be too scared, you won't be too grossed out. But you might find this so boring for the first 50 minutes that you want to hurt yourself. Stick with it, though (if you can). It does get better.

The Exorcist - Very creepy and disturbing. It was pretty scary, although some of it was so cheesy it was hard not to laugh.

I notice how a lot of the classic 70's and 80's horror films have aged as well. But, I hate when people call them cheesy. It's like everytime you or someone does, you're implying that the stuff being made today is somehow completely free of what years down the road might be looked at as equally laughable, or the way I look at it now as being stupid and completely void of almost any entertainment value.

[UmbrellaFish]

Beauty and the Beast-

Well, it was a screening for my Drama Club, so to be honest, I was laughing and talking with my friends more than paying attention to the movie. Although, this shocked me, when a teacher asked who had never seen the film, between five and ten children raised their hands, mostly boys.

And while most of the (older) cast have been watching their copies of Beauty and the Beast, half of the audience had never seen "Human Again" intergrated into the film as it's not on the VHS's they own. So I really don't think Disney "vaulting" strategies have really helped the brand much...

[Old Fish Tale]

Tinker Bell - You know, with the whole "Rapunzel" controversy, the question of whether or not CG can be "painterly" comes up constantly. And I find myself wondering why no one ever points to Tinker Bell as proof that it can be done. Is the character animation perfect? Well, no, not quite. But the backgrounds are lush and gorgeous in a way that I personally haven't seen in CG outside of this series. It's purely magical and beautiful, and I can't get enough of this movie. Now, I do prefer the sequel plot-wise. But I feel that the music is better in the original, which also benefits from the larger presences of Silvermist, Rosetta, Fawn, Iridessa, and (last but certainly not least) Vidia. I honestly don't think I can wait until Autumn for more Disney Fairies goodness!

I fully agree! The backgrounds looked simply magnificent! And the character animation keeps getting better and better! I just adore those two films and I think they deserve more recognition! I simply can't wait for 'Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue'! Vidia and humans? I'm so there!

[Margos]

I fully agree! The backgrounds looked simply magnificent! And the character animation keeps getting better and better! I just adore those two films and I think they deserve more recognition! I simply can't wait for 'Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue'! Vidia and humans? I'm so there!

Oh yes, I've definitely noticed that it's been improving. The character animation in Lost Treasure looks a couple years ahead of what we saw in Tinker Bell, and the Great Fairy Rescue trailer is even more impressive than Lost Treasure! It's like, once DisneyToon started getting going, they just couldn't be stopped! Thank you, Mr. Lasseter! Maybe, once this series ends, I may actually start paying attention to anything else that they do, because I'm sure they'll use what they've learned about filmmaking in the future.
But yes, it will be very interesting to see what happens with Vidia. Do you play the Pixe Hollow MMORPG? They've just introduced Vidia into the game, because apparently, Rosetta brought her a peace offering and the two of them are now friends. There's also some mysterious lighted windows that we'll find out what's inside at the end of the month, but there's a rumor that it may be a permanent home for Vidia. Do you think it could be in promotion for GFR, and if so, it foreshadows a redemption and change-of-heart for everyone's favorite bitchy fast-flyer?