Your Highness. What a concept: stoner comedy (High-ness--get it?) meets Pythonesque medieval farce. Too bad it turns out like a compilation of the scenes Mel Brooks cut out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights for being too crude and stupid. And Natalie Portman fans should beware the bait-and-switch: she gets third billing but doesn't show up until an hour into the film! Avoid.
Please tell me they left in the scene where she undresses near the lake?
Some people would complain even if you hang them with a new rope
Your Highness. What a concept: stoner comedy (High-ness--get it?) meets Pythonesque medieval farce. Too bad it turns out like a compilation of the scenes Mel Brooks cut out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights for being too crude and stupid. And Natalie Portman fans should beware the bait-and-switch: she gets third billing but doesn't show up until an hour into the film! Avoid.
Please tell me they left in the scene where she undresses near the lake?
Yes, but she still wears a g-string and you only get some cheek. The movie is far more obsessed with male genitalia--including one character who has it digitally removed and another that actually shows it in the AROUSED position as he finishes raping another man. Gawd, who thought this was funny?
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - GREAT film adaptation of the classic book/series. Oldman really brought Smiley to life. So many other top names to boot.
If you can follow the storyline, it's thoroughly enjoyable. I had an advantage as I'd already read the book(s).
i really dunno what this is. comedy, romantic comedy, sci-fi? f@ck knows.
surprisingly funny though, not will farrels best but if you want a film to watch with er in doors it aint half bad.
Author Karen Eiffel is suffering from writers block, with her main issue being how she kills off her character Harold Crick. The usual theme to her books is she kills off the main character at the end of her books but this time she can't come up with a suitable demise. Little does she know that her character Harold is actually a real person, in fact an IRS tax man working in the same city in which she resides. Harold think he's suffering from hearing voices in his head, but it turns out the voice is actually Eiffel narrating his life as she types it out on her typewriter.
Along the way of discovering if he's nuts or not, Harold meets tax dodging baker Ana, and he falls for her. He then figures out what the voice in his head is, tracks down author Eiffel who is then left with the predicament; Kill off Harold and write the best selling comeback title of her career or let Harold live and find happiness with the sexy baker.
Comedy ensues, and the ending is quite poetic.
It's also directed by Marc Forster and the titles are by Mk12, coincidence????
Your Highness. What a concept: stoner comedy (High-ness--get it?) meets Pythonesque medieval farce. Too bad it turns out like a compilation of the scenes Mel Brooks cut out of Robin Hood: Men in Tights for being too crude and stupid. And Natalie Portman fans should beware the bait-and-switch: she gets third billing but doesn't show up until an hour into the film! Avoid.
Please tell me they left in the scene where she undresses near the lake?
Yes, but she still wears a g-string and you only get some cheek. The movie is far more obsessed with male genitalia--including one character who has it digitally removed and another that actually shows it in the AROUSED position as he finishes raping another man. Gawd, who thought this was funny?
I think I'll stay away. Thanks for the heads up (no pun intended) HB.
Some people would complain even if you hang them with a new rope
A couple recently, which I will post separately...
The Remains of the Day
Turner Classic is featuring Merchant-Ivory films this month, and I caught this one last week. I recall walking out of the theater in 1993 absolute loving this one, and 18 years on it was every bit as good as I remembered. Anthony Hopkins plays Stevens, a butler in an English manor in the years leading up to WW2. He has devoted his life to "service" (as domestics refer to it) and is brilliant at running the house of Lord Darlington. Darlington (James Fox) is a nice chap, but he's a naive and genteel racist who, in seeking to avoid war, is a driving force in trying to have Britain placate the Nazis. Stevens witnesses all of this, but is so single-mindedly devoted to his duties that he willfully ignores it, as he does any notion of real emotion. Emma Thompson plays Miss Kenton, the head housekeeper, who develops a real fondness for Stevens that, much as he feels it as well, he will not allow himself to return. She eventually leaves for a different life, Darlington dies humiliated, and twenty years later Stevens seeks to correct his life's error by beseeching her to return when the manor has a new owner. Alas, too late.
Hopkins, not long removed from his Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal Lector, is nothing short of phenomenal as the repressed Stevens. The rigid and reserved nature of the character demands that Hopkins portray emotion in the subtlest of ways, and he does amazingly well. As I was watching, I had to rack my brain to think of why he didn't win another Best Actor Oscar (Tom Hanks, Philadelphia - OK, I may not agree, but fair enough). Emma Thompson, another recent Oscar-winner in the previous Merchant-Ivory film Howard's End (also opposite Hopkins) is excellent here as well. Back then, she seemed to be on her way to being the closest thing to Meryl Streep, and she was every bit of what actresses like Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett are today. I had forgotten that Hugh Grant was in this - he's quite good, and it's interesting to see him as a quality actor before he became the smarmy rom-com guy that started with Four Weddings and a Funeral. This is also one of Christopher Reeve's last films before his accident.
All in all, this remains (no pun intended) an amazing film - a reminder of what seems like a simpler time when the Merchant-Ivory team cranked out one quality film after another.
Steven Soderbergh's star-studded virus epidemic thriller. No less than Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne are either victims, relatives, researchers or journalists (sometime more than one of these things) dealing with a plague-like epidemic that kills millions of people and threatens to wipe out much of human cilvilization. Sounds corny, and of course you know it can't end with the virus winning - and yet, the film held my attention quite easily. Soderbergh shoots as he did Traffic, with multiple storylines and color-tinged camera shots. I won't spoil the details, other than to say that Gwyneth Paltrow has probably never appeared on camera less made up (good for her) and that my favorite scene involves a poignant playing of U2's "All I Want Is You".
Not a classic, maybe not even one you need to rush out to see in the theater, but a solid piece of entertainment. And pretty scary, to boot.
Baby Geniuses - Why? Why?? Whyyyyy??!!! Was this made as part of a studio scam, ala Springtime For Hitler? So bad it even traumatised the Nostalgia Critic, not even veteran cult 80s/90s character actor Christopher Lloyd and Kim Cattrall could partially salvage this idiotic nonsense. 1/10
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Ironclad, a recent epic depicting key events following the signing of the Magna Carta.
Though I'm by no means an authority on English history, I'll try my best. This film chronicles an important battle from the "First Barons' War", the siege of Rochester Castle. After the Barons of England and Templar Knights force the King to sign the "great Charter" The King breaks his oath and then heads roll.
King John is played by Paul Giamatti, a fine character actor but not quite a perfect choice here. Over the top and ranting at his Danish mercenaries and their chieftain Tiberious, played by the awesome Vladimir Kulich of 13th Warrior, the guy just seems too short to play a king. The better casting is Brian Cox, (natch) as Baron William d'Aubigny and Charles Dance's seemingly effortless talents as Archbishop of Canterbury are well appreciated.
One time Bond candidate James Purefoy holds heroic first man leading duty as William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. A Templar Knight who has taken an oath of celibacy. That vow is immediately put to the test by actress Kate Mara. (playing a fictional character, Lady Isabel)
Anyway, (thank you, wikipedia), In haste to defend Rochester castle the Baron and the Knight assemble a motley crew of magnificent seven. Each their own walking movie cliche. You've got the Robert Vaughn killing machine, the giant bearded lovable bruiser, the humorous illiterate who spits at death, and the young Horst Buchholz virgin killer.
And then we have a lengthy last stand with all the good stuff, including hot oil and siege catapults, a ragged group of under twenty men defending to the last against tyrannical John and his mercenaries. There's very graphic violence and a predictable outcome. As a fan of these sorts of stories I enjoyed every last minute of it, even if Kate Mara is pretty one dimensional and the history is loosely dramatized. But,"Ironclad" is still a crappy title for a flick.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,658Chief of Staff
Jonah Hex...
...again, I have no knowledge of this as a comic book /graphic novel....maybe that helped me...?...I thought it an interesting premise - guy whom nearly died that can talk to the dead...unfortunately it doesn't quite fulfil it's promise...reminiscent of Wild, Wild West with it's mix of cowboy times and modern tech....I did enjoy it more than I thought I would...but it's a definate 'by-the-numbers' movie....
Not really my usual thing, and of course it got c0ckblocked by No Strings Attached earlier this year, neither film really got great acclaim.
The first half really is pretty bad on account of the director not having funny bones, the two leads JT and Mila Kunis having no sexual chemistry and not looking too great with their kit off either imo, plus a horrible unsexy song playing while they decide to get at it. It does pick up a bit, but really the whole premise is so slim it needs to be padded out loads, with cross cultural references to New York and LA, JT's Dad having Alzheimer's, Woody Harrellson the gay sports writer with a crude, bawdy line in patter and a cute boat. It's not quite a whole movie but it gets better as it goes on, I suppose it's a time filler, which is the reason I saw it.
Based on Michael Lewis's bestseller about Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team who was arguably the first influential user of statistical analysis to drive his personnel decisions. I doubt the film will have much of an impact outside of the US due to its focus on baseball, but it's a pretty good film. Brad Pitt plays Beane as the type-A guy that by all accounts Beane is, and Jonah Hill takes a break from the Apatow ecosystem to deliver an excellent understated portrayal of the math whiz who runs all the numbers.
Ironclad, a recent epic depicting key events following the signing of the Magna Carta.
Though I'm by no means an authority on English history, I'll try my best. This film chronicles an important battle from the "First Barons' War", the siege of Rochester Castle. After the Barons of England and Templar Knights force the King to sign the "great Charter" The King breaks his oath and then heads roll.
They had an outdoor showing of Ironclad at the actual Rochester Castle, which is still in good nick and is of course in the town of Rochester, opposite the cathedral. Town is pretty run down though, it's a real chav area sadly, overshadowed by its history including Charles Dickens who came from the area (hence the name Mr Rochester).
The Eagle. A swords-and-sandals epic with Channing Tatum as the hunkiest garrison commander in the Roman army, who pulls the crappiest assignment in the Empire: strutting his stuff in that jerkwater hole, Britain. Ah, but he really wants to be there: see, his father lost the title object some 20 years before in Scotland, which so infuriated Hadrian that he decided to wall up the Scots. That'll show 'em! So Channing teams up with the all-grown-up Billy Elliott to single-handedly get that bling back from the blue-skinned, mohawk-wearing Scots. If my write-up sounds more entertaining than the movie, it is. Then again, watching mold accumulate on uneaten haggis would be more entertaining than watching this dull tripe. And is it just me, or does Donald Sutherland now think that acting consists of putting on a period costume and shuffling around the set?
Vox clamantis in deserto
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,992Quartermasters
Based on Michael Lewis's bestseller about Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team who was arguably the first influential user of statistical analysis to drive his personnel decisions. I doubt the film will have much of an impact outside of the US due to its focus on baseball, but it's a pretty good film. Brad Pitt plays Beane as the type-A guy that by all accounts Beane is, and Jonah Hill takes a break from the Apatow ecosystem to deliver an excellent understated portrayal of the math whiz who runs all the numbers.
I enjoyed it.
Agreed, Sir Hillary. Saw it yesterday. Very good; but I tend to enjoy baseball movies.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
The Eagle. A swords-and-sandals epic with Channing Tatum as the hunkiest garrison commander in the Roman army, who pulls the crappiest assignment in the Empire: strutting his stuff in that jerkwater hole, Britain. Ah, but he really wants to be there: see, his father lost the title object some 20 years before in Scotland, which so infuriated Hadrian that he decided to wall up the Scots. That'll show 'em! So Channing teams up with the all-grown-up Billy Elliott to single-handedly get that bling back from the blue-skinned, mohawk-wearing Scots. If my write-up sounds more entertaining than the movie, it is. Then again, watching mold accumulate on uneaten haggis would be more entertaining than watching this dull tripe. And is it just me, or does Donald Sutherland now think that acting consists of putting on a period costume and shuffling around the set?
Disappointed to hear that Eagle sucked, Hardy. I'd been waiting for the bluray to drop. Guess the medieval piece Black Death with Sean Bean will be my next blind buy!
I don't like watching movies with Sean Bean in, even though most of them are fantastic, purely because he'll always be Sharpe to me. No other role comes close. -{
This Boy's Life, a movie so old Leonardo DiCapiro's voice hadn't broke, Ellen Barkin still had a career, and Robert DeNiro actually gave a damn about acting. And DeNiro plays one of his scariest characters: not a mafioso or even Frankenstein's monster, but a verbally and physically abusive step-dad. This is a tough, emotional film, but well worth it. Also worth it to see Tobey Maguire and Carla Gugino as teens and Eliza Dushku in adolescence--showing no sign of looking like she would as an adult. . .
Vox clamantis in deserto
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,658Chief of Staff
Went to watch Johnny English:Reborn on Sunday....and you get pretty much what you would expect from it too....it's silly, childish, purile but - on the whole - quite fun....not sure what that says about me though )
Good strong cast too Dominic West plays Simon Ambrose...the 'James Bond-type character'...Gillian Anderson is head of MI7...Rosamund Pike is the love interest - looking very lovely too....Tim McInnerny plays the 'Q' character...
As said...it's very silly but enjoyable enough...take the kids though....the will enjoy it more than you !
I picked this DVD up in a backstreet, but when I got it home Paris Hilton was nowhere to be seen! Swindlers, I tell you! Okay, okay, this is Woody Allen's latest and again, another 'return to form'. My sister said it was delightful, but she had no expectations. Any UK guy might recall a BBC comedy called Goodnight Sweetheart from the 1980s in which a young man steps into a pub and finds himself back in the 1940s, where he meets and falls in love with a belle from back then, committing a kind of time-travellers adultery. This has a similar theme only it's an American Owen Wilson (who looks not wholly unlike Nicholas Lyndhurst) who gets in a Rolls and finds himself back in Paris in the 1920s, his ideal time.
It's a decent premise. I didn't take to the film however. It has lovely opening shots of Paris, but the cinematography is very plain and grainy and Woody's style is very point and shoot throughout. Don't expect much depth here. Wilson falls into the trap of just imitating Woody, like most his leading men do, and it's a distraction. Actually, I thought Johnny Galecki from The Big Bang Theory would have been excellent in the role, as he has real comic chops and I'm not sure Wilson does really.
Michael Sheen (Blair) turns up as a pompous bore, the sort you see in Allen's films sometimes, and gets plaudits for being wholly unlike his Blair persona. Initially you find yourself thinking that talk of him being a Bond villain is really not wide of the mark at all. Until, that is, you realise that he's doing another of his impersonations - it's a young Anthony Hopkins. Again, Sheen is not bad, but doesn't really nail the humour of the situation, though it gets indulgent audience titters.
The scenes where our hero finds himself in 1920s Paris lack authenticity and is all too broadly drawn for my taste, with Hemingway seeming a real bore and the whole thing might as well be set in a 1920s themed speakeasy bar in Shoreditch. All these literary legends of the time take to Wilson, though he seems to bring nothing to the party at all, has nothing of interest to say to them. And you never get much sense of why he might feel disillusionment for the time: wouldn't a neurotic like Allen realise that they never washed their hands after using the john back then? What about the casual racism of the time? The smoke, the dirt in the air? It's all rather superficially done. As Hemingway says at one point, it doesn't matter what the story is, so long as it's told well, and I don't think this was told very well.
Carla Brunei puts in a good cameo, she's actually quite good.
Not a review But I found this and thouht it was funny.
Things You Wouldn't Know Without Movies
-It is always possible to park directly outside any building you are visiting.
-A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
-If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.
-Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.
-It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
-When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they will never suffer a concussion or brain damage.
-No one involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock.
-Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
-When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
-You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
-Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds, unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
-An electric fence, powerful enough to kill a dinosaur will cause no lasting damage to an eight-year-old child.
-Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment you turn the television on.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
"Headhunters" is a crime thriller based on a novel by Jo Nesbo. The story is not a part of the Harry Hole series, to be filmed by Working Title soon. If you havent read any of his novels yet, you should. They are huge bestsellers all over the world. This story is filmed in Norwegian by director Morten Tyldum. It is the story about Roger Brown (Aksel Henie) who picks the best candidates for top jobs in big companies. He is married to a tall, beautifull blonde (Synoeve Macoby Lund) who he showers with money to keep happy and content. He also steals expensive paintings from the people he gets in contact with through his job. His next target is Claes Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a former CEO of a Dutch company that sells tracking tecnology, owner of a painting that could set Brown for life and a former member of a special forces unit specialising in tracking fugetives. Talk about hard target! Of cource it goes wrong and Brown finds himself in deep **** - see the movie to find out preciesely how deep ..
The movie has great plot that goes in surpricing directions and a good cast. Hennie is a star in Norway, best known for playing the lead in box office hit "Max Manus"(Man of War). Macoby Lund has never acted before, she is really a professional film critic! She is also beautifull, blond, a fan of nudity and tall. She uses all those qualities to her advantage in "Headhunters", but she also does the acting required well enough. Coster-Woldau is best known from the HBO series "Game of Thrones".
You may wonder why I write about a Norwegian film? Well, because of the popularity of Jo Nesno`s crime novels and the qualities of the film itself "Headhunters" will be shown in at least 30 countries, including The US, Germany and UK. The plotis surprising and makes good use of action and humor. Go see it!
As much as I like Helen Mirren, this was disappointing. The pace was slow and I didn't really connect with any of the characters. I'd be interested in what others thought of this film.
The great Marcello Mastroianni plays Andrea Rossi Colombotti, an Italian army officer who can only become aroused in the presence of danger, leading to a series of ever more hilarious encounters with a parade of Italian beauties. As Colombotti struggles to cope with his peculiar condition, he goes to ever more absurd lengths to get his thrills, culminating in a fateful encounter with a beautiful baroness and her sadistic deaf husband, all as Colombotti's long suffering fiancee, desperate to lose her virtue, remains completely clueless of her beloved's affliction and in utter awe of his self-restraint.
Colombotti is the kind of role that Mastroianni was perfect at, effortlessly alternating between suave and bumbling, his every misadventure a showcase for his perfect timing and deft physical comedy. Verna Lisi and Marisa Mell (of Danger Diabolik) lead the parade of beauties that both tempt and frustrate our hero.
I'd seen this movie many years ago on late night TV and had spent years looking for it on video to no avail. I was pleasantly surprised to see it released on BluRay and relieved that the film was every bit as funny as I remembered it.
Highly recommended.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,992Quartermasters
"Paranormal Activity 3"
If you enjoyed the others (and my sons and I did), then you'll enjoy this one. Probably the most frightening of the three, focusing on VHS recordings ostensibly made in September 1988, dealing with the two women (each of whom were the central characters in previous films)...a 'prequel,' if you will. This is the only one of the three we've seen on the big screen; watching with a crowd adds to the experience, IMO.
If you can effectively suspend your disbelief that a guy would record video footage of himself watching recorded video footage, you'll be rewarded with some delicious suspense...and a few fine scares. This is a good place to end this series; I hope they do. After this, it's played out. Great Halloween fun at the cinema, though. Recommended for fans of the franchise; if you've not seen them, I'd suggest watching them in order. 3 out of 5 stars.
As a post-script: saw possibly the most frightening and disturbing trailer ever, before the film: "The Devil Inside," an exorcism film, due out in January '12. Wow.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Film noir early 80s homage thing, highly stylised, you could pair it up with American Gigolo for a double bill of neon and urban alienation.
The main event, other than the look and the direction, is lead Ryan Gosling who comes from the Daniel Craig line of leading men, ie not very talkative. Indeed, it's as if they took a film that was meant for Steve McQueen or Richard Gere and cast instead Cameron from Ferris Bueller, with a dash of Stan Laurel's idiot savant smile and the gormless ambience of early days Rodney from Only Fools and Horses. That Gosling makes it work is what makes this a star-making vehicle. Carey Mulligan is good as the love interest, though to use another UK reference, poor old Cassie from Skins must be kicking herself that all her moves are being stolen.
That this is nail biting stuff yet not conventionally an action movie is the sort of thing the new Bond director should be examining. Also, that the American bad guys are just the sort that Craig's Bond would do well to come up against, it wouldn't have that lame Spang brothers vibe or DAF, though it would have been a comedown for Connery or Moore's Bonds.
Good stuff, with some of its early WTF? moments regarding the main character actually panning out satisfactorily. Still some minor implausibilities, though.
There’s Something About Mary - Another late 90s comedy film featuring Cameron Diaz when her career got white hot and it also launched Ben Stiller as a deadpan comedy actor for the next decade or so. As opposed to the sleazy slash ‘n splatter fest, Very Bad Things, There’s Something About Mary extracts its humour from surrealism and above all cringe inducing embarrassment, which veers into being a little too crude in places (making it less appropriate for younger viewers than Dumb and Dumber). Matt Dillon as a snide, oily private investigator arguably provides most of the laughs alongside that poor dog that Diaz’s character owns, Chris Elliott got more nuts as the plot progressed, Lin Shaye was so wonderfully repulsive, but Lee Evans was a tad too superfluous to the movie but fair enough. I slightly preferred Dumb and Dumber. 7/10
Inside Man - Perhaps a bit too clever for its own good, too much of a soapbox for Spike Lee in places, and too gimmicky (’Let’s put Denzel Washington on a Segway!’) but a solid, slick heist movie. Clive Owen plays a fiercely intelligent and fiercely intense team leader of a militarily precise crew that hold up a huge New York bank when half the NYPD are encamped outside, pulling off the impossible during the course of the film. The boys in blue are headed by Denzel Washington in an against regulations Zoot suit, the competent Chiwetel Ejiofor as his sidekick, and a somewhat wasted William Dafoe, with the not-quite-but-almost-English Christopher Plummer and a frosty Jodie Foster as an untrustworthy duo who are protecting the dark secrets of the bank being occupied. Spike Lee likes Clive Owen’s character a bit too much (when he put a few dozen bystanders through a couple of days of emotional trauma, even beating one of them up) but you can’t help but admire the endless ingenuity of the bank crew to avoid arrest. 8/10
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Wow, who could really go wrong with talent such as Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, Steven Moffat, and Peter Jackson?! Tintin was a Belgium comic book character who was a cross between Dr. Jones and Hercule Poirot, an investigative journalist who goes on far fetched globe spanning adventures and fight stereotypical bad guys. Hergé’s fantasy 1930s/1940s setting is brought convincingly to life with beautiful CGI backdrops and motion captured stylised characters who just about stay out of the Uncanny Valley (though Bianca Castafiore made my skin crawl). Andy Serkis steals the show as Captain Haddock, while Daniel Craig channels Jason Isaacs as the main villain, but Jamie Bell is merely OK as the anchor to the eccentric cast ensemble. Steven Spielberg's directing felt a bit tired in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but is much fresher with “new” characters and a more solid script to play with. I really liked this much more than I expected, with even the flash back to a 17th century pirate battle blowing all of the guilty pleasure PotC sequels out of the water. 10/10
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Wow, who could really go wrong with talent such as Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, Steven Moffat, and Peter Jackson?! Tintin was a Belgium comic book character who was a cross between Dr. Jones and Hercule Poirot, an investigative journalist who goes on far fetched globe spanning adventures and fight stereotypical bad guys. Hergé’s fantasy 1930s/1940s setting is brought convincingly to life with beautiful CGI backdrops and motion captured stylised characters who just about stay out of the Uncanny Valley (though Bianca Castafiore made my skin crawl). Andy Serkis steals the show as Captain Haddock, while Daniel Craig channels Jason Isaacs as the main villain, but Jamie Bell is merely OK as the anchor to the eccentric cast ensemble. Steven Spielberg's directing felt a bit tired in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but is much fresher with “new” characters and a more solid script to play with. I really liked this much more than I expected, with even the flash back to a 17th century pirate battle blowing all of the guilty pleasure PotC sequels out of the water. 10/10
The adventures of Tintin: The secret of the Unicorn.
Utterly brilliant.
Oliver and I really enjoyed it - and the cinematography was fantastic. Never seen anything quite like it and utterly captivating. I was slightly worried that Oliver wouldn't be able to follow the fairly complex story plot (well, for a 6 year old anyway) but he loved it.... and the voices were inspired.... including Jamie Bell, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Daniel Craig... :x
She's worth whatever chaos she brings to the table and you know it. ~ Mark Anthony
Comments
Please tell me they left in the scene where she undresses near the lake?
Yes, but she still wears a g-string and you only get some cheek. The movie is far more obsessed with male genitalia--including one character who has it digitally removed and another that actually shows it in the AROUSED position as he finishes raping another man. Gawd, who thought this was funny?
If you can follow the storyline, it's thoroughly enjoyable. I had an advantage as I'd already read the book(s).
Like Bond, but without the glamour.
i really dunno what this is. comedy, romantic comedy, sci-fi? f@ck knows.
surprisingly funny though, not will farrels best but if you want a film to watch with er in doors it aint half bad.
Author Karen Eiffel is suffering from writers block, with her main issue being how she kills off her character Harold Crick. The usual theme to her books is she kills off the main character at the end of her books but this time she can't come up with a suitable demise. Little does she know that her character Harold is actually a real person, in fact an IRS tax man working in the same city in which she resides. Harold think he's suffering from hearing voices in his head, but it turns out the voice is actually Eiffel narrating his life as she types it out on her typewriter.
Along the way of discovering if he's nuts or not, Harold meets tax dodging baker Ana, and he falls for her. He then figures out what the voice in his head is, tracks down author Eiffel who is then left with the predicament; Kill off Harold and write the best selling comeback title of her career or let Harold live and find happiness with the sexy baker.
Comedy ensues, and the ending is quite poetic.
It's also directed by Marc Forster and the titles are by Mk12, coincidence????
8/10
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
www.helpforheroes.org.uk
www.cancerresearchuk.org
I think I'll stay away. Thanks for the heads up (no pun intended) HB.
The Remains of the Day
Turner Classic is featuring Merchant-Ivory films this month, and I caught this one last week. I recall walking out of the theater in 1993 absolute loving this one, and 18 years on it was every bit as good as I remembered. Anthony Hopkins plays Stevens, a butler in an English manor in the years leading up to WW2. He has devoted his life to "service" (as domestics refer to it) and is brilliant at running the house of Lord Darlington. Darlington (James Fox) is a nice chap, but he's a naive and genteel racist who, in seeking to avoid war, is a driving force in trying to have Britain placate the Nazis. Stevens witnesses all of this, but is so single-mindedly devoted to his duties that he willfully ignores it, as he does any notion of real emotion. Emma Thompson plays Miss Kenton, the head housekeeper, who develops a real fondness for Stevens that, much as he feels it as well, he will not allow himself to return. She eventually leaves for a different life, Darlington dies humiliated, and twenty years later Stevens seeks to correct his life's error by beseeching her to return when the manor has a new owner. Alas, too late.
Hopkins, not long removed from his Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal Lector, is nothing short of phenomenal as the repressed Stevens. The rigid and reserved nature of the character demands that Hopkins portray emotion in the subtlest of ways, and he does amazingly well. As I was watching, I had to rack my brain to think of why he didn't win another Best Actor Oscar (Tom Hanks, Philadelphia - OK, I may not agree, but fair enough). Emma Thompson, another recent Oscar-winner in the previous Merchant-Ivory film Howard's End (also opposite Hopkins) is excellent here as well. Back then, she seemed to be on her way to being the closest thing to Meryl Streep, and she was every bit of what actresses like Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett are today. I had forgotten that Hugh Grant was in this - he's quite good, and it's interesting to see him as a quality actor before he became the smarmy rom-com guy that started with Four Weddings and a Funeral. This is also one of Christopher Reeve's last films before his accident.
All in all, this remains (no pun intended) an amazing film - a reminder of what seems like a simpler time when the Merchant-Ivory team cranked out one quality film after another.
Steven Soderbergh's star-studded virus epidemic thriller. No less than Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne are either victims, relatives, researchers or journalists (sometime more than one of these things) dealing with a plague-like epidemic that kills millions of people and threatens to wipe out much of human cilvilization. Sounds corny, and of course you know it can't end with the virus winning - and yet, the film held my attention quite easily. Soderbergh shoots as he did Traffic, with multiple storylines and color-tinged camera shots. I won't spoil the details, other than to say that Gwyneth Paltrow has probably never appeared on camera less made up (good for her) and that my favorite scene involves a poignant playing of U2's "All I Want Is You".
Not a classic, maybe not even one you need to rush out to see in the theater, but a solid piece of entertainment. And pretty scary, to boot.
Though I'm by no means an authority on English history, I'll try my best. This film chronicles an important battle from the "First Barons' War", the siege of Rochester Castle. After the Barons of England and Templar Knights force the King to sign the "great Charter" The King breaks his oath and then heads roll.
King John is played by Paul Giamatti, a fine character actor but not quite a perfect choice here. Over the top and ranting at his Danish mercenaries and their chieftain Tiberious, played by the awesome Vladimir Kulich of 13th Warrior, the guy just seems too short to play a king. The better casting is Brian Cox, (natch) as Baron William d'Aubigny and Charles Dance's seemingly effortless talents as Archbishop of Canterbury are well appreciated.
One time Bond candidate James Purefoy holds heroic first man leading duty as William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. A Templar Knight who has taken an oath of celibacy. That vow is immediately put to the test by actress Kate Mara. (playing a fictional character, Lady Isabel)
Anyway, (thank you, wikipedia), In haste to defend Rochester castle the Baron and the Knight assemble a motley crew of magnificent seven. Each their own walking movie cliche. You've got the Robert Vaughn killing machine, the giant bearded lovable bruiser, the humorous illiterate who spits at death, and the young Horst Buchholz virgin killer.
And then we have a lengthy last stand with all the good stuff, including hot oil and siege catapults, a ragged group of under twenty men defending to the last against tyrannical John and his mercenaries. There's very graphic violence and a predictable outcome. As a fan of these sorts of stories I enjoyed every last minute of it, even if Kate Mara is pretty one dimensional and the history is loosely dramatized. But,"Ironclad" is still a crappy title for a flick.
...again, I have no knowledge of this as a comic book /graphic novel....maybe that helped me...?...I thought it an interesting premise - guy whom nearly died that can talk to the dead...unfortunately it doesn't quite fulfil it's promise...reminiscent of Wild, Wild West with it's mix of cowboy times and modern tech....I did enjoy it more than I thought I would...but it's a definate 'by-the-numbers' movie....
Not really my usual thing, and of course it got c0ckblocked by No Strings Attached earlier this year, neither film really got great acclaim.
The first half really is pretty bad on account of the director not having funny bones, the two leads JT and Mila Kunis having no sexual chemistry and not looking too great with their kit off either imo, plus a horrible unsexy song playing while they decide to get at it. It does pick up a bit, but really the whole premise is so slim it needs to be padded out loads, with cross cultural references to New York and LA, JT's Dad having Alzheimer's, Woody Harrellson the gay sports writer with a crude, bawdy line in patter and a cute boat. It's not quite a whole movie but it gets better as it goes on, I suppose it's a time filler, which is the reason I saw it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Based on Michael Lewis's bestseller about Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team who was arguably the first influential user of statistical analysis to drive his personnel decisions. I doubt the film will have much of an impact outside of the US due to its focus on baseball, but it's a pretty good film. Brad Pitt plays Beane as the type-A guy that by all accounts Beane is, and Jonah Hill takes a break from the Apatow ecosystem to deliver an excellent understated portrayal of the math whiz who runs all the numbers.
I enjoyed it.
They had an outdoor showing of Ironclad at the actual Rochester Castle, which is still in good nick and is of course in the town of Rochester, opposite the cathedral. Town is pretty run down though, it's a real chav area sadly, overshadowed by its history including Charles Dickens who came from the area (hence the name Mr Rochester).
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Agreed, Sir Hillary. Saw it yesterday. Very good; but I tend to enjoy baseball movies.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Good strong cast too Dominic West plays Simon Ambrose...the 'James Bond-type character'...Gillian Anderson is head of MI7...Rosamund Pike is the love interest - looking very lovely too....Tim McInnerny plays the 'Q' character...
As said...it's very silly but enjoyable enough...take the kids though....the will enjoy it more than you !
I picked this DVD up in a backstreet, but when I got it home Paris Hilton was nowhere to be seen! Swindlers, I tell you! Okay, okay, this is Woody Allen's latest and again, another 'return to form'. My sister said it was delightful, but she had no expectations. Any UK guy might recall a BBC comedy called Goodnight Sweetheart from the 1980s in which a young man steps into a pub and finds himself back in the 1940s, where he meets and falls in love with a belle from back then, committing a kind of time-travellers adultery. This has a similar theme only it's an American Owen Wilson (who looks not wholly unlike Nicholas Lyndhurst) who gets in a Rolls and finds himself back in Paris in the 1920s, his ideal time.
It's a decent premise. I didn't take to the film however. It has lovely opening shots of Paris, but the cinematography is very plain and grainy and Woody's style is very point and shoot throughout. Don't expect much depth here. Wilson falls into the trap of just imitating Woody, like most his leading men do, and it's a distraction. Actually, I thought Johnny Galecki from The Big Bang Theory would have been excellent in the role, as he has real comic chops and I'm not sure Wilson does really.
Michael Sheen (Blair) turns up as a pompous bore, the sort you see in Allen's films sometimes, and gets plaudits for being wholly unlike his Blair persona. Initially you find yourself thinking that talk of him being a Bond villain is really not wide of the mark at all. Until, that is, you realise that he's doing another of his impersonations - it's a young Anthony Hopkins. Again, Sheen is not bad, but doesn't really nail the humour of the situation, though it gets indulgent audience titters.
The scenes where our hero finds himself in 1920s Paris lack authenticity and is all too broadly drawn for my taste, with Hemingway seeming a real bore and the whole thing might as well be set in a 1920s themed speakeasy bar in Shoreditch. All these literary legends of the time take to Wilson, though he seems to bring nothing to the party at all, has nothing of interest to say to them. And you never get much sense of why he might feel disillusionment for the time: wouldn't a neurotic like Allen realise that they never washed their hands after using the john back then? What about the casual racism of the time? The smoke, the dirt in the air? It's all rather superficially done. As Hemingway says at one point, it doesn't matter what the story is, so long as it's told well, and I don't think this was told very well.
Carla Brunei puts in a good cameo, she's actually quite good.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The movie has great plot that goes in surpricing directions and a good cast. Hennie is a star in Norway, best known for playing the lead in box office hit "Max Manus"(Man of War). Macoby Lund has never acted before, she is really a professional film critic! She is also beautifull, blond, a fan of nudity and tall. She uses all those qualities to her advantage in "Headhunters", but she also does the acting required well enough. Coster-Woldau is best known from the HBO series "Game of Thrones".
You may wonder why I write about a Norwegian film? Well, because of the popularity of Jo Nesno`s crime novels and the qualities of the film itself "Headhunters" will be shown in at least 30 countries, including The US, Germany and UK. The plotis surprising and makes good use of action and humor. Go see it!
As much as I like Helen Mirren, this was disappointing. The pace was slow and I didn't really connect with any of the characters. I'd be interested in what others thought of this film.
Reflections in a double bourbon...
The great Marcello Mastroianni plays Andrea Rossi Colombotti, an Italian army officer who can only become aroused in the presence of danger, leading to a series of ever more hilarious encounters with a parade of Italian beauties. As Colombotti struggles to cope with his peculiar condition, he goes to ever more absurd lengths to get his thrills, culminating in a fateful encounter with a beautiful baroness and her sadistic deaf husband, all as Colombotti's long suffering fiancee, desperate to lose her virtue, remains completely clueless of her beloved's affliction and in utter awe of his self-restraint.
Colombotti is the kind of role that Mastroianni was perfect at, effortlessly alternating between suave and bumbling, his every misadventure a showcase for his perfect timing and deft physical comedy. Verna Lisi and Marisa Mell (of Danger Diabolik) lead the parade of beauties that both tempt and frustrate our hero.
I'd seen this movie many years ago on late night TV and had spent years looking for it on video to no avail. I was pleasantly surprised to see it released on BluRay and relieved that the film was every bit as funny as I remembered it.
Highly recommended.
If you enjoyed the others (and my sons and I did), then you'll enjoy this one. Probably the most frightening of the three, focusing on VHS recordings ostensibly made in September 1988, dealing with the two women (each of whom were the central characters in previous films)...a 'prequel,' if you will. This is the only one of the three we've seen on the big screen; watching with a crowd adds to the experience, IMO.
If you can effectively suspend your disbelief that a guy would record video footage of himself watching recorded video footage, you'll be rewarded with some delicious suspense...and a few fine scares. This is a good place to end this series; I hope they do. After this, it's played out. Great Halloween fun at the cinema, though. Recommended for fans of the franchise; if you've not seen them, I'd suggest watching them in order. 3 out of 5 stars.
As a post-script: saw possibly the most frightening and disturbing trailer ever, before the film: "The Devil Inside," an exorcism film, due out in January '12. Wow.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Film noir early 80s homage thing, highly stylised, you could pair it up with American Gigolo for a double bill of neon and urban alienation.
The main event, other than the look and the direction, is lead Ryan Gosling who comes from the Daniel Craig line of leading men, ie not very talkative. Indeed, it's as if they took a film that was meant for Steve McQueen or Richard Gere and cast instead Cameron from Ferris Bueller, with a dash of Stan Laurel's idiot savant smile and the gormless ambience of early days Rodney from Only Fools and Horses. That Gosling makes it work is what makes this a star-making vehicle. Carey Mulligan is good as the love interest, though to use another UK reference, poor old Cassie from Skins must be kicking herself that all her moves are being stolen.
That this is nail biting stuff yet not conventionally an action movie is the sort of thing the new Bond director should be examining. Also, that the American bad guys are just the sort that Craig's Bond would do well to come up against, it wouldn't have that lame Spang brothers vibe or DAF, though it would have been a comedown for Connery or Moore's Bonds.
Good stuff, with some of its early WTF? moments regarding the main character actually panning out satisfactorily. Still some minor implausibilities, though.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Inside Man - Perhaps a bit too clever for its own good, too much of a soapbox for Spike Lee in places, and too gimmicky (’Let’s put Denzel Washington on a Segway!’) but a solid, slick heist movie. Clive Owen plays a fiercely intelligent and fiercely intense team leader of a militarily precise crew that hold up a huge New York bank when half the NYPD are encamped outside, pulling off the impossible during the course of the film. The boys in blue are headed by Denzel Washington in an against regulations Zoot suit, the competent Chiwetel Ejiofor as his sidekick, and a somewhat wasted William Dafoe, with the not-quite-but-almost-English Christopher Plummer and a frosty Jodie Foster as an untrustworthy duo who are protecting the dark secrets of the bank being occupied. Spike Lee likes Clive Owen’s character a bit too much (when he put a few dozen bystanders through a couple of days of emotional trauma, even beating one of them up) but you can’t help but admire the endless ingenuity of the bank crew to avoid arrest. 8/10
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Wow, who could really go wrong with talent such as Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, Steven Moffat, and Peter Jackson?! Tintin was a Belgium comic book character who was a cross between Dr. Jones and Hercule Poirot, an investigative journalist who goes on far fetched globe spanning adventures and fight stereotypical bad guys. Hergé’s fantasy 1930s/1940s setting is brought convincingly to life with beautiful CGI backdrops and motion captured stylised characters who just about stay out of the Uncanny Valley (though Bianca Castafiore made my skin crawl). Andy Serkis steals the show as Captain Haddock, while Daniel Craig channels Jason Isaacs as the main villain, but Jamie Bell is merely OK as the anchor to the eccentric cast ensemble. Steven Spielberg's directing felt a bit tired in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but is much fresher with “new” characters and a more solid script to play with. I really liked this much more than I expected, with even the flash back to a 17th century pirate battle blowing all of the guilty pleasure PotC sequels out of the water. 10/10
The adventures of Tintin: The secret of the Unicorn.
Utterly brilliant.
Oliver and I really enjoyed it - and the cinematography was fantastic. Never seen anything quite like it and utterly captivating. I was slightly worried that Oliver wouldn't be able to follow the fairly complex story plot (well, for a 6 year old anyway) but he loved it.... and the voices were inspired.... including Jamie Bell, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Daniel Craig... :x