Last movie you watched?

[taranchula]

Slap Shot (1977)

Paul Newman + Hockey = Awesome.

For those who haven't seen it, the movie is about a struggling minor league hockey team who adopts a new "violence first" strategy to help win games and bring in the fans.

[jekylljuice]

No Country For Old Men

Now that I have this Coen Brothers masterpiece upon DVD, I've watched it quite a few times. Javier Bardem is still every bit as terrifying to me as he was upon my initial viewing, which I think is a true testament to the strength of his performance, but there are other cast members who have made an impression in the meantime upon me too, including Kelly Macdonald - she plays quite a passive and powerless character for much of the film, but by the end she's demonstrated that she has quite a lot of inner strength too.

I'm also really delighted to have picked up the original novel by Cormac McCarthy in a charity shop recently (from which I hear the film was very faithfully translated). I hope to get down to reading it soon, as soon as I'm done with my current reading material. For my thoughts upon that, see the "What are you reading?" thread.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Hancock

I really wish I could have seen the unrated version of this movie because I felt the dark nature with all the mature violence, swearing, and drinking gave this movie a more of a unique edge. While I did enjoy it and loved the musical score of the film's soundtrack, I really felt the "mystery revealed" towards the end was a bit off putting which is weird for me because I love super hero stuff.

I just felt this movie mixed in too many rules and regulations that weren't necessary and I thought more time could have been better spent showing more of Will Smith's character's background or at least some more fowl mouth stuff cause at least I know what i'm getting into with that. On the plus side this movie had a very under appreciated villain and over all I'd say it was a C+ movie.

[jekylljuice]

Tom and Jerry: The Movie

Yeah, I’m aware that this has something of a reputation for being a real steaming train wreck of a movie (and certainly not without some degree of justification) , but for some strange reason I get a huge kick out of watching weird, cheaply-made animated films from the late 80s/early 90s, and this one certainly fits the bill. True, it’s far from a great movie but, sue me, I still find it to be highly entertaining and altogether impossible to dislike. So, observations?

Firstly, the big one, the one which gets stuck in everyone’s craw in regard to this movie – they give Tom and Jerry voice-overs. Not only that, but voiceovers which barely seem to suit the characters at all. Admittedly, it’s hard to envision just what kind of voiceovers actually would have suited Tom and Jerry, but that’s probably because one of their fundamental trademarks is being a SILENT duo. The movie’s defenders will point out that Tom and Jerry spoke perfectly fluently in the comic book adaptations, and nobody seemed to mind too much, but then I think that the lack of any audible voices, along with any actual indication of how they should sound in the first place, makes a huge difference. Maybe it's a double standard, but there you go.

Next, it’s a musical. That itself shouldn’t have to be a bad thing, except that the songs, if you can call them that, are almost universally godawful – for much of the time, they didn’t even bother with tiny little things like tune and melody, opting instead just to have characters intermittently speak in rhyme in a slightly more buoyant tone than the rest of the movie. But hell, it only adds to the comedy value. In the case of Dr. Apple Cheek's elegant little ditty, tenfold.

To its credit, the animation isn’t too bad – a bit Saturday morning cartoonish, perhaps, but it’s still nicer on the eye than most Don Bluth efforts of this era.

The supporting cast are a little odd – there’s a stray dog named Pugsey who seems to have no purpose beyond convincing our cat and mouse protagonists that they should put aside their differences and be friends in the early stages of the movie (this, naturally, was perceived as another kick in the groin to anyone who showed up with any expectations of seeing Tom and Jerry do what they do best – namely, pound the snot out of one another...although frankly, the sheer one-sidedness of much of the violence in the original shorts always left me feeling a little cold. So I care less). Once that’s accomplished, the movie conveniently gets rid of him, then later brings him back, presumably to give his charcter just a little bit of closure, then off he goes again. I mean, yeesh, he doesn’t even offer to be of any assistance with Tom and Jerry’s pivotal quest (though that’s possibly a good thing - to me, he isn't one of the movie's more interesting figureheads). He also travels around with a weird, three-inch tall green creature passing itself off as a flea, but which blatantly isn’t...for starters, what kind of flea would actually sit atop a reasonably healthy looking dog and proclaim to be starving? It makes no sense to me.

Then the humans – aside from the archetypal waif Robyn and her father, all of them just seem to have a little too much...I don’t know, tension? Yes, I have seen the Nostalgia Critic’s review of this film, and many of his observations are indeed spot-on – notably, that the manner in which Dr. Apple Cheeks sidles up to that ice cream cart toward the movie’s climax is just a little on the creepy side, and that naming an adult character “Captain Kiddie” was kind of asking for trouble (again, extra comedy value). By far the most creative of the original characters is a morbidly obese dachshund named Ferdy who prefers dragging himself around on a skateboard to actual walking, and has a REEEEEEALLY peculiar voice-over - I assume that it was intended to sound kind of reminiscent of Muttley, but he sounds a lot more like Gollum attempting to do a convincing Donald Duck impersonation, and not quite succeeding. Call me pathetic, but I actually think that he’s kind of cool.

In brief, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, didn’t exactly do a great deal to replicate the tone and spirit of the original T&J shorts, and that’s probably why T&J purists the world over decried it upon its release in 1992. If you're in with that crowd, then I'm guessing that you're not going to like it. For everybody else it’s a must-see. I mean that.

[frankie_fan]

Disney's Peter Pan

I couldn't help myself. Being a Tinker Bell fan (Yeah, I admit it. So sue me!), I just had to get this film on DVD.

It's still a wonderful film 56 years after it was made. I really enjoyed it.

[Lynnie]

That's been my favorite ever since I was itty bitty. As a matter of fact, it inspired my own imaginary friends. I'll always be a Peter Pan fan, especially of Disney's.

Hmm, what was the last movie I watched? I think it was a Victorian story on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre a few weeks ago. An intriguing story about an Irish woman who loves one man genuinely, and hates another who has an uncontrollable passion for her. It was a mini series, as many Masterpiece Theatre movies are. I missed the last few. Shame.

[Cassini90125]

Deep Impact

Another "Here comes the asteroid" movie. Unremarkable but enjoyable, and rather low-key compared to the bombastic Armeggedon, which came out around the same time. A bit more realistic than the latter movie as well, insofar as the term "realistic" can ever be applied to Hollywood asteroid movies.

[Mr. Marshmallow]

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

On the past three occasions I have gone to the movies, all 3 times Paul Blart has been sold out! The first time I didn't care cause i was seeing My Bloody Valentine 3D, the second time i tried to intentionally see Mall cop and it was sold out and today me and my girlfriend were just one ticket away from having that show sold out as well. She and I got 2 of the last 3 tickets for that show.

Luckily we made it to see it today (theater was STILL jam packed and it had been for the past WEEK and a half I might add) and we finally got to sit down and watch it. Truth be told? Its......all right, average, okay. I didn't set my expectations super high or anything but I heard great reviews and hoped the large crowds would indicate this movie is really something worth wild.

Well it is and it isn't. The movie is pure fat guy humor and physical comedy with few swears and no fart or sexual jokes, which works in this case. Kevin James really carries this movie well and manages to be funny and compelling to watch at the same time. There was some pretty impressive and actually intelligent chase scenes and traps Blart sets for the crooks and robbers.

However, I kind of felt the humor fell flat sometimes and had its basic ups and downs plus I wish the movie was a bit longer. At 87 minutes, you could easily find room to wiggle in some more jokes for the film's sake anyway. Overall, average movie not bad but not grand. Glad I saw it though and at least my girlfriend got a whole lot out of it.

[emperor26]

Afro Samurai: Resurrection

I catch the 2 hour movie premiere on Spike last night, and after two years, the sequel to the 2007 anime mini-series proves to be worth watching.

The movie was very well-written, with some great action scenes and tragic moments, the voices were well-cast (especially with actors like Lucy Lui and Mark Hamill) and overall, the movie was able to top its predecessor.

But what took me by surprise near the end of the film is:

Spoiler Below

Justice, the main villain from the show, is alive and well, perhaps hinting he'll be back in another sequel

In general, this is a must-see, and on time as well, since it comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray next week.

[AerostarMonk]

Slumdog Millionaire

So currently Danny Boyle's newest film is the frontrunner for Oscar gold, and today I found out why. For anyone thinking this is your usual manipulative and dry Oscar bait, you cannot be more wrong. What we have here is a fable the way fables were meant to be told. It's a shame that this movie got saddled with the truly unwarranted rating of R by the MPAA. It truly deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

The movie follows Jamal Malik, a young uneducated man who finds himself on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? While being interrogated for possibly cheating at the game, for how can an unedecated man from the slums know any of the answers, the film shows how each answer had been permanently etched into his mind by life itself. The movie is both bittersweet and beautiful. Run, don't walk to see this movie.

Excuse my disjointed thoughts.