DVDizzy Forum

Thank You For Smoking (2005)

After having read all kinds of raving reviews, this one was kind of a let-down. I kept waiting for it to get interesting, but it never took off the way I had expected.

Dr Frankenollie wrote:

Lazario wrote:...E.G. Marshall (who played a villain in Stephen King's Creepshow)...

A 12 Angry Men star was in a Stephen King miniseries?!

Creepshow wasn't a mini-series, if that's what you're referring to. But, yeah that makes 2 King 'adaptations' for Marshall- far as I know.

I 'say' it like that because Tommyknockers was a book and Creepshow wasn't- it was written specifically for release in the theater and just so you know, I count as being one to the 15 best horror films ever made (the fact that Dawn of the Dead's George A. Romero directed it is a big part of that). If you ever have a chance, see it- at night and with the lights out would probably help even though I saw it for the first time during the day in bright lights and even then I was so deeply engrossed, my nails were bitten down to 'bout nothing. Marshall as well as the other bigger names in the cast- Ed Harris, Leslie Neilson, Viveca Lindfors, Hal Holbrook, Ted Dansen, and Adrienne Barbeau are remarkable in it.



Talked a bit about these movies already in the Director's Report Card thread but I rewatched all after getting the DVD's and have a few things to say:



Jackie Brown (1997 / directed by: Quentin Tarantino)



Still the same as I remember it. I cried once at the ending. Maybe 10 years ago. Didn't cry this time. And, thanks to DVD, I can now skip over the entire Beaumont sequence (hence why this doesn't get 4 stars). I don't think Chris Tucker is funny and I have never liked that scene. Pam Grier is just remarkable and should have been nominated for an Oscar for this performance- which Tarantino mentioned on the DVD. It's a crime she wasn't. I'm only mildly a fan of what Robert Forester is doing in the movie. Some people didn't buy their chemistry at all and so a romance naturally doesn't develop. I think that's his fault. They only really come together because they have age and the fact that they've aged well in common. Also, maybe blame falls on Tarantino for this, where the film was hinting at romance is not were you'd expect. He mentions again on the DVD that his staring at her during "Natural High" was not a moment of attraction. Then Tarantino remarks that this confused white audiences... That's right, we made the mistake here; we're typically this aloof. So, yeah, the DVD didn't make me any bigger fan of Tarantino even though I agree with him that the idea the older characters might be mature enough for a real romance isn't gross- I believed him when he said that aspect bothered younger audiences. Anyway, whether you take this movie seriously or as a loving homage, it's an incredibly entertaining and emotionally moving experience. It's a movie that has always made me feel good. It's got a few flaws in the gears, they move slower in some cases because there's something missing between the characters who need to have chemistry (for example, what Jackie tells Max about taking his gun when he first shows up at her house and his reluctance to get personal with her even though / after she bares her soul to him- another thing that makes a possibility of them having a deeper relationship stunted throughout the movie). And the cast, even if they're not always working for me (it's little things here are there, typically), are great.

For example, Tarantino wanted Jackson to come off like a monster. I see how desperation can make a person do monstrous things, but standing next to Grier in any scene, Jackson's character comes off as pathetic and nowhere near as smooth as Tarantino intended. Everytime. I say it's the character though. In this case (because his acting is stellar). For De Niro, it's different. Obviously he does great when it looks like the movie's going to let him do something but I feel maybe his being cast in this tiny, thankless role where he does almost nothing was pointless. Bridget Fonda gets more screentime and affects the plot in a bigger way than he does. In the end, when she gets shot- it looks like someone shot her because of the money. This is important because money of course is what makes the whole movie go 'round. When he's shot, he's just another body being racked up to make Jackson look more threatening to Grier's character. All I can say there is - good for her, bad for him. Which is I guess why Tarantino says women like the movie better than / more than men do. Fonda's being smarter than her character should be makes her more valuable to the movie than most of the male characters, even if she feels like an Uma Thurman downgrade. Valley Girl's Michael Bowen is a more interesting non-character than Michael Keaton, who is out and out wasted in my mind. Easily the weakest character in the movie. His should-be intense, "I'm reading through you with my eyes" routine doesn't lead to anything other than my assumption that we're meant to think he's a boob. But in the end, it turns out she needed him after all. I don't know what to say to that other than what I say about most of the movie- just watch it. Some elements go deep. (Most anything dealing with Grier's character. For example, there's a great moment I'll bet a lot of audiences glanced over that I think is one of the movie's finest: when Grier is sitting at the bar with Jackson playing smooth and suddenly the bartender, an older gentleman, approaches her and hits on her as he walks away yet does so with more class and style than Jackson's character could possibly muster). Many others just float on the surface.




Starman (1984 / directed by: John Carpenter)



This one's a tragic case for many reasons. It was never successful at the box office and that's kinda doomed it to several lackluster, no frills type releases on home video. I used to think it was criminal but most tragic of all, now that I've taken a pretty close look at it, I can see why not that many people really love it as much as I used to. Karen Allen is a remarkable, underrated actress. Or just underseen- even I don't know much she's ever been in. But what I've seen her in, she's never once failed to make me care about her. She's a walking, talking heart. Even the rare moment she slips doesn't mar her performance in the slightest. The dialogue doesn't give him much except for some moldy, unsculpted, lifeless cliches, but the same is nonetheless true for Charles Martin Smith as the bouncy extra terrestrial enthusiast trying to convince the military to do the right thing. The weakest link of the ones that matter is Jeff Bridges as the alien. I'm no acting buff, for certain, but I heard Carpenter himself claim that he had a lot of trouble from the cast on the movie. Maybe Bridges was capable of more in this role and between him and Carpenter, it all was lost in poor translation. But the effect of watching him onscreen is often purely taxing. His robot reflexes are too often not the slightest bit authentic and his actions seem tailored to the situation. And most of which border on pretentious. Such as a scene where he condescendingly copies Buck Flower's southern trucker-cook dialect in a conversation with him, yet he never does that with any other character. He'll copy an action like spitting or a hand gesture, but he never outright talks to a character in this same manner. In fact, this was something that even bothered me when he tried to sing. He recites the chorus of Rolling Stones' singing of "...Satisfaction" but in a radically different, softer tone. Wouldn't he instead be repeating it in the same tone they were singing it in? He claims he has a photographic / audiographic (etc) memory where he remembers everything his body senses and he picks and chooses how he's going to repeat what he hears. Yet, he basically recites Frank Sinatra's "...New York, New York" in the higher tone he sings in and "Satisfaction" in a lower tone because we know Karen Allen's character is in a more frenzied state at the time. We notice, he doesn't.

If you're wondering why I might bother to call out a moment like that anyway, but it's because the movie's greatest impact is emotional and yet, this is done for I can assume humor and it's just annoying. That he mugs for the camera or "sings" these songs at all. I hate to say it because these movies aren't in any other way superior, but the famous "Johnny 5" character from the Short Circuit films had more charisma. Jeff Bridges? He has a stunningly hairless, muscularly perfect body. And at times, a somewhat appropriate amount of sensitivity. But even this leads to a WTF(?) moment on occasion. The biggest one being when she asks him what it's like on his planet and he tells her what about Earth is superior, what he'll miss when he leaves. At the last moment, he references sex in a way that feels entirely creepy / unappealing even though they've shared an intimate moment so life-changing for her that she says (at one point) she'd rather die than be split apart from him. I believed her and understood how she could say that. To its' credit, the movie goes a long way in helping us appreciate her grieving for her loss and what both of these relationships mean to her. That's not the problem. The problem is- he frequently slides back and forth between sincerely naive or sweet and suggestively deeply-intelligent or kinda creepy. Finally, the movie caves to a lot of completely boring interludes of sci-fi nonsense. Did we need to see a yucky bodily transformation sequence on top of the pretty cool effects with the hand-held magical orbs which are a lot more emotionally and visually dazzling than this gloppy physical mutation garbage? Let's say no, not merely because I prefer the more colorful glowing red, blue, and yellow lights from the orbs but also, because the character watching this display has recently gone through the emotionally traumatic experience of losing her husband and given that this imagery suggests It's Alive developments will follow (she walks in the room and reacts to seeing what looks like a balling infant)- why should the movie (even for a second) tell her: "No, you can't hold your man anymore. But here's this baby for you to watch after. Isn't that better somehow?"

The movie had to deal with the implication that the alien looking identically like her dead husband was a choice made to help give her closure, and the ending was the movie's way of at least giving her the chance to say goodbye whereas his actual death in the accident was a devastating and heart-ripping way of taking him away. I'm not sure it does. Exactly. But what it does provide is a very long, very detailed, and what felt to me to be a very rewarding emotional journey for her that is easy to get sucked into for several reasons. One being that the film, in typical Carpenter fashion, looks incredible. It's problematic when it's talky. But being as long as it is and being directed by someone as masterful at creating a potent cinematic experience as Carpenter is, there is a lot more than words being offered. This turns the movie on, full-blast, somewhere just around the half-way point. It's a movie that gets a lot better as it goes along, starting as a soulless and flashy "coming to Earth" starcraft sci-fi alien-guy-is-weird thing and patiently unfolding into a beautifully slow and breath-takingly picturesque adventure. Since it's also a travel movie, you get to see shots of America that will take you RIGHT out of your seat. The best being the gloriously wide and deep shot of the mountains of New Mexico from inside the back of a pickup truck that lasts for nearly 2 minutes. And since it's Carpenter, you get this and something akin to exposition / character development at the same time. There are equally larger than life shots of Las Vegas from as far back as you can get, skies and horizons in the Carolinas and at least one unnamed state, and the insides of various truck stops and a family owned "Indian" museum / gift shop that are just as big as a James Bond set. And just as that seems pretty impressive on its' own, there's Jack Nitzsche's, frequently repetitive but always, arresting and ethereal score. Which is indescribably beautiful even though it's cold, electronic, and synth-heavy. So, even though there's nothing new or interesting about the movie's "government wants to cut the alien open, not communicate with and learn from him," the woman and the alien's trip is still full of amazement. And even though the performances aren't always effective, they do each fall into place. Part of the movie is formula, and that part only slows the movie down to a point. Even the weakest element, Bridges, finds a groove. Surprisingly enough, his very soothing voice (and that body really doesn't hurt either) pulls him through most of the rough spots.

An imperfect movie. But one that has emotional cohesion despite its' mechanical episodicness.

The Cremator

One of, if not the best film to come out of the short lived period of artistic freedom that accompanied the Prague Spring is Juraj Herz’s The Cremator. Unfairly sidelined when discussing the work of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Herz’s dizzying film is a truly impressive work that combines the black comedy and psychological horror genres to dazzling effect. The film follows the titular cremator, Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrušínský) who is fanatical with regards to his work and descends into madness as he is courted by the invading Nazi party. The allegorical nature of the film’s totalitarian force was not lost to the Soviet authorities who banned it shortly after its release.

The film’s memorable visuals succeed in disorientating the viewer into an almost hypnotised state. The amount of varying styles that Herz and cinematographer Stanislav Milota manage to blend together into a single package without the style becoming distracting is a feat unto itself. The Cremator features surrealistic elements that likely originate from Herz’s puppetry background and that of his friend Jan Švankmajer (Alice); expressionistic mise-en-scène that harks back to another film that features a madman – Robert Wiene’s silent masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; extreme close-ups in the vein of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc; deep focus shots that resemble Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and even some Hitchcockian scene transitions. However, perhaps most frighteningly of all, is the film’s terrifying use of the first-person perspective to not just disorientate you by putting you in close proximity with a deranged madman but implanting you into his mind itself.

The film’s horrifying nature is further amplified by the haunting, chilling soundtrack that accompanies it, courtesy of composer Zdeněk Liška but even more important is the man who plays the madman - Rudolf Hrušínský who plays Karl in the manner of a creepier, slimier and all together scarier Peter Lorre (M). Quoting from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he is obsessed by his duties to the point where he believes he is liberating souls by setting them free to pursue reincarnation. With Karl, Herz perhaps goes deeper than anyone else in cinema in exploring the human origins of the Holocaust, the necessary living mechanisms that would assist the Final Solution in being realised – the atrocities that Herz, himself a Holocaust survivor, experienced first hand.

The parallels with reality – historical or present – that The Cremator carries make it one of the most terrifying films in the entire horror genre. The plot is a journey that travels from dark humour characteristic of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb to surreal psychological horror that featured a few years earlier in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and could later be found in the work of David Lynch. Herz’s masterpiece is an altogether more frightening document on the loss of humanity that accompanies times of war and tumult.

Goliath wrote:Thank You For Smoking (2005)

After having read all kinds of raving reviews, this one was kind of a let-down. I kept waiting for it to get interesting, but it never took off the way I had expected.

Yeah, the most interesting bit for me was the phone joke.

yamiiguy wrote:The Cremator

Man that picture is huge. I have a Widescreen monitor though, so it fits on mine.

But my pics don't usually stretch out the page, do they? On non-widescreen screens? I had someone tell me that it's only around 1000 wide that the screen begins to stretch.

Sorry, I've replaced it now.

ajmrowland wrote:Yeah, the most interesting bit for me was the phone joke.

See, I don't even remember that and it's only a week ago that I saw it.


Dinner at eight (1933)

From the category 'they just don't make 'em like this anymore', this is a delightful old-fashioned comedy about a socialite throwing a dinner party for some fancy guests, but all of them turn out to have their own quirks or dirty secrets. The origins of the story as a stage play are clearly present (every fifteen minutes or so the stage of the action changes and it's for the most part just two or three people talking), but it's never disturbing. Not all characters are equally interesting, but all in all, I had a very good time watching it. I especially enjoyed the amazing performance of Marie Dressler, who was hilarious and perfect in her delivery, and Billie Burke was wonderfully over-the-top as well.

East of Eden (1955)

Just one element kept me watching: James Dean's amazing performance. The story itself didn't really take off until halfway through the film and up until that point was rather boring and pointless, but after that, the motivations of Dean's character finally became clearer and he became more easy to empathisize with. Dean was perfect as the tormented young Cal, and he walked a very fine line between method acting and over-acting, but he never crossed it. His role was a bit exhausting for me as a viewer, though.

The Help

I've seen a couple of films about racism in the USA, but never before one that focuses so much on the fate of black housemaids serving southern white families and how they view their life. Based on the book by the same name (which I haven't read yet). As reviews on IMDB shows and as could be expected, here's as much love as hate for this movie, for there never seems a right way to tackle this subject without offending anyone.
I personally liked the move very much, and viola Davis reminded me of the character of Lily Harper in the TV series "I'll fly away" which has a similar subject.

Ratings based on a 5 star method.
[Blue = 1st time rating and/or viewing]

Swing Kids (1993) ✰✰✰
The Prestige (2006) ✰✰✰1/2
Batman Begins (2005) ✰✰✰✰

My sister was on a Christian Bale kick last week.

Shooting Dogs (2005)

Gripping, engaging drama about the Rwandan genocide which cost over 800,000 people their lives. Masterfully told, the story is about a young idealist teacher (Hugh Dancy) and an experienced priest (magnificently played by John Hurt) who run a Catholic school which soon turns into a refugee camp under UN flag for Tutsis who are escaping their former Hutu neighbors who are now on a beastly killing spree. We all know how it ended: the world turned a blind eye; the UN pulled out; a massacre ensued. The two main characters slowly start to realize they can't save the people whom they have come to love. This tense atmosphere of constant threat, as the Hutus (machetes and axes in hand, ready to use them) are partying outside the gates of the school, is masterfully translated to the screen. Although the movie has the same theme as Hotel Rwanda (2004) (also about the UN abandoning a so-called safe 'safe zone' for Tutsi refugees), it's not as well-known. Hotel Rwanda is the better film of the two, but still this one deserves to be seen, to act as a sad reminder that the promise of "never again" at the Neurenberg trials wasn't fulfilled.

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Well, whaddayaknow! Finally a film by the Coen Brothers that I liked! Yet it still had the trademark quirkiness that most of their films are made up of. It's a modern film noir with a fantastic cast, including Billy Bob Thornthon, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson (got far too little screentime, imo) and James Gandolfini (reminding me of his Sopranos character).

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) 6.5/10 - It honestly wasn't as bad as I was expecting. There were some good themes in there that they should've explored a little more instead of going for action sequences. Actually, that is this movie's main problem; 90% of it is action. It needed a little more time to breath. I like how they tried to develop Po's relationships with Tigress and Mr. Ping but they just didn't do enough with it. The plot of him searching for his biological parents would've been more interesting if they eased us into the idea and didn't just force it as a plot device to give Po a new obstacle to overcome. The animation was flawless, as expected, but once again there were some miscasts in the voice acting department (Seth Rogen, Michelle Yeoh and especially Danny McBride, just didn't fit their characters). It was a fine movie but wholly unnecessary.

Earlier this month, I caught the final chapter in the Jack Hunter mini-series:
Jack Hunter and the Star of Heaven (2009)* - 6
As you can tell by my rating, I didn't really care for the films that much. I didn't DISLIKE them, they just aren't something I'll probably watch again. They are a far cry from Indy, or National Treasure. I watched The Librarian films late last year, and I'd say they were better than the Jack Hunter films/miniseries

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littlefuzzy wrote:2012:
01. - Scared Stiff (1953) - 7
A fun little Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis flick, where the duo goes off to bust ghosts at a haunted castle.

Scared Stiff is a remake of an earlier film called The Ghost Breakers (1940), with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. I watched Ghost Breakers on the 11th of January.

I think I heard they were directed by the same person, many of the lines, scenes, and so on of the two films were identical. Most of the differences came from the different style of comedy between Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. Bob Hope had a "Rochester" style man-servant, and was a radio announcer. Dean had a singing act, with Jerry Lewis as a bumbling busboy.

I liked Paulette Goddard (Ghost Breakers) more than the woman who played the same character in Scared Stiff, but then I've always liked Paulette Goddard (Modern Times, in particular.) I did like some of the stuff in the Scared Stiff version, with Carmen Miranda, and Jerry having to do one of her numbers in drag.

Alex (the Rochester-style servant) was played by Willie Best. The character was the stereotypical African-American character prevalent in the 40s, scared of ghosts, and basically tagging along as a servant. Occasionally he got a few good lines, but the relationship between his character and Hope was vastly different than the give and take of Martin and Lewis.

I think over all, I prefer the Martin and Lewis version, although as I said, I like Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. I gave both films a 7.

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Walk Like a Man (1987)* - 7
This film has Howie Mandel, lost as an infant and raised by wolves. Enter Christopher Lloyd, his sneaky brother, who wants to get his hands on "Bobo's" 30 million dollar inheritance. Add a slightly batty mother who adopted cats when she lost her child, the drunken wife of the brother, a slew of gambling cronies who want to get their loans back from the brother, and of course, the requisite love interest, a young woman who finds Bobo in the woods, and teaches him to reintegrate into society. Mix all of that together, and you get a fun little 80s film.

I guess I had a Disney movie night last night, with Beauty and the Beast in 3D in theaters and Tangled for the first time on Netflix.

It seems to be just me since literally all of my friends love it, but BatB has never been one of my favorite Disney films. I like it a lot, and the songs are great (I especially like Something There, Belle, and of course, Beauty and the Beast), but it always seems so quick and like some loose ends aren't tied up. I admit that Belle is probably the most responsible and easily likable Disney Princess, but there's just something about the film that makes me not like it as much as others.

Tangled was good... I was expecting something a lot different than what it was, but I thought the animation and voice acting was great. I'm glad I finally saw it.

No et Moi (2010)

French film about the 13 year old girl Lou who has to do a school assignment about homeless people and meets the 19 year old No, who lives on the streets. Slowly, they become friends and No gets taken in by Lou's family. But she soon falls back into bad habits and starts to drag Lou with her. My high expectations weren't quite met by the final film, as some of it felt repetitious and I didn't really "feel" the bonding between Lou and No. But there's enough here to enjoy, especially the acting by Nina Rodriguez (Lou). You've never seen such an endearing, charming and irresistable child actor before.

Disney's Pocahontas (1995)

Much better than most people give it credit for. For starters, the animation is gorgeous and among the very best Disney has ever done. Way better than anything in the so-called 'Fab Four'. I also love the characters of Pocahontas and John Smith. She often gets a bad rep because she supposedly was too serious, but I see lots of differents facets in her personality. Yes, she's serious at times and also wise and responsible (very different from Ariel, Jasmine or Rapunzel), but in the scenes with Nakoma you can also see her playful side, and 'Just Around the Riverbend' shows how adventurous she is. He is not as well-defined as Aladdin or Flynn Rider, but shows more growth than most male Disney leads. Other great points include the score and the wonderful songs.

Still, the film could have been much better if they did away with much of the animals' nonsense. Not only was it not too funny most of the times, they also served no purpose. Unlike Flounder and Sebastian or the enchanted household in BatB, Meeko, Flit and Percy have no role in the story. They're thrown in almost like an obligatory addition, because McDonalds needed some extra figurines in their Happy Meals. I still have my doubts about Grandmother Willow. The film makes it look natural, but I criticized TLK for passing off cliched and worn-out "truths" as "deep messages" (and hitting us over the head with it) and this looks a bit the same to me. Still, I think this film pulls it off much better.

My biggest beef with the film is setting up the Indians and the settlers as equals in their hatred and ignorance toward things/people they don't understand. The film puts them on equal footing, but it was not the Indians who were invading other people's land and wanting to rob them blind. It was the Europeans who massacred the Indians in a horrible genocide. So to say, "well, the Indians were stubborn and prejudiced also" is a false equivelancy and was probably put in to make for a nice "balanced" story with a kind of happy end (when "both sides" have come to their senses).

Still, flaws included, Pocahontas deserves much more love than it gets. It is infinitly better than its predecessor The Lion King and now that I finally have it on DVD, I'm sure I will revist it time and again.

^ As far as I know, Pocahontas only gets hatred for its completely inaccurate portrayal of the Pocahontas/John Smith story. Everyone usually agrees that the animation, etc. are fantastic.

PeterPanfan wrote:^ As far as I know, Pocahontas only gets hatred for its completely inaccurate portrayal of the Pocahontas/John Smith story. Everyone usually agrees that the animation, etc. are fantastic.

Well, there are people who think the music sucks and don't like the animation because they regard it as 'stiff'. Just look at the comments on the IMDB board. And also: the movie is not enough 'fun', unlike other Disney classics.

Based on a maximum rating of 4 stars

The Artist (2011) ✰✰✰1/2

A very enjoyable "silent" film (there are a few parts with sound, but I am not saying where). The entire cast was great in their roles and the little dog was quite a scene stealer.