Bob Turnbull

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

I have to say that never occurred to me. And thinking back...Hmmm, I still don't really see it. What were some of the indicators for you that this was the case? Or have you exhausted that conversation by now? I thought that the second group of girls pretty much put an end to him with that final freeze frame boot to the head (by Rosario Dawson), but I can't say that I have any strong convictions...

Films Watched in 2008 , 2007 , 2006 , 2005
S&S List , HTF Top 20 Films
My Blog , My DVDs (horribly out of date)

PatW

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

Tarzan Escapes (1936)

My least favourite of the first six Weissmuller Tarzan flicks. This one has cousins of Jane who are determined to bring her back to civilization under the guise of a large fortune that she will inherit but must go back to England to claim it. This one could have been better but re-writes and editing made the film alot weaker.

Michael Elliott

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

Tarantino talks a lot of trash but during one interview he mentioned that he would go to grindhouse films and every once in a while they'd have the reels messed up. He claims one time that the second half of the movie was shown before the first half.

With that in mind...

With the first group of girls, Russell doesn't play around with them. As soon as he gets the chance he kills them without mercy. In the second half, he plays around with them the entire time and never attempts to kill them even though he has plenty of chances. Even when the chase originally ends, Russell gets out of the car, laughing and smiling as if he were just playing a game. Of course, they catch up with him and give him the beating of a life time.

To me, Russell killed the first group without mercy because this happened last. He played around with the first set of girls and it nearly killed him so he doesn't take any more chances like that. He kills them first where they don't have a chance to do anything to him. You'll also notice that his car is "death proof" only in the first half. He has a chamber in it to kill the girl in the passenger seat and he also has it where no one could pull him out. I think the car being "death proof" in the first half is just another reason as to why the two halves are out of place.

You can read more in the official thread where there's even more questions brought up but it doesn't make much sense to me for him to kill without mercy and then joke around with the girls. I think getting his head kicked in would be the reason he'd go out stalking and kill without mercy.

So, I think the film ends with him killing the first set of girls and in the end he's in the hospital where he'll eventually go free and kill again.

IMDB Reviews

Michael Elliott

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

01/28/08

Hoi Holloi (1935) Del Lord

Trading Places for its day finds two rich men making a bet that one can turn some bums into smart gentlemen. The three men turn out to be the Three Stooges and they get their shot at a fancy party. There are some good laughs here including a scene where Larry loses his shoe on the dance floor but overall this is a pretty standard short. I did notice that the sound effects were heavily used here for the first time.

Ants in the Pantry (1936) Jack White

The Three Stooges are working as exterminators but when business is slow they decide to plant the insects themselves, which just leads to trouble. All the jokes here are rather hit and miss with most of them being misses but this short is still pretty entertaining. There's a "cut the hards" scenes, which was borrowed from the Marx Brothers but it's pretty funny here as is another scene where the boys start a dance after a guy gets a mouse down his back.

American Gangster (2007) Ridley Scott

Set in the 1970s, a detective (Russell Crowe) tries to bring down a notorious heroin kingpin (Denzel Washington). 2009 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first gangster film and I'm not sure if one small sub-genre has given us more great films. This is an incredibly little picture that packs quite a punch with its violence, moral lessons and storytelling. The film clocks in twenty-minutes short of the three hour mark but there's not a single second that comes off boring and there's not a single second where something great isn't going on. We've seen the rise of gangsters before but director Scott does a terrific job at making it feel fresh and new. The cinematography is terrific, the soundtrack great and the film has an authentic feel throughout. What really makes the film special is the screenplay takes time to look at Crowe and Washington outside their jobs. We see how the two men work but we also get to see how the two of them deal with stuff in their personal lives. The film takes its time telling the story but this is a big praise because we get to see more than one dimensional characters. Both Washington and Crowe deliver great performances and I might even go as far as to say it's the best of both of their careers. Both come with that calm and cool grace that most actors try for but fail at delivering but that's not the case with these two. How neither of them got an Oscar nomination is beyond me but I think time will be very friendly to both of them. Another strong aspect is the supporting cast, which includes Ruby Dee, Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and a terrific Armand Assante. There's a lot of intense dialogue from start to finish and near the end with get a classic shootout but the best moments of the film might take place at the very end when Washington and Crowe finally share the screen together. For the most part the film is very fast paced but it slows down at the very end when the two stars come together and their little chat gives one a lot to think about what they've seen.

01/29/08

Half Shot Shooters (1936) Del Lord

Seventeen years after the end of WW1, the Three stooges find themselves poor and hungry so they accidentally sign up for the Army to cause more trouble. There are a few gags here that work but most of them miss. One of the best gags has Curley pulling his shoe up and another has the three firing off a canon, which hits their Admirel's boat.

Pain the the Pullman, A (1936) Del Lord

The Three stooges board a train heading for a new job but their pet monkey causes all sorts of trouble. Once again, this short is pretty good but there are still plenty of misses in the joke department. The best moment is when the boys are trying to get into their bed but it's up to high so they have a little trouble. The monkey also gets a few nice laughs.

False Alarms (1936) Del Lord

The Three Stooges are about to be fired at their fire fighting jobs but the Captain gives them one more shot, which they take advantage of by destroying his new car. This is certainly a step up from the previous couple shorts as this one here returns to the fast paced roots of the earlier movies. The stuff with the fat girl was very funny and the boys antics are a lot funnier here including a great sequence where the wreck the car.

Whoops I'm an Indian (1936) Del Lord

Lazy short from The Three Stooges has them wanted by the law so they dress as Indians but then run into a man whose wife left him for one. The jokes here are pretty standard and routine and there really weren't any laugh at loud moments. The fishing scene is probably the highlight but even this wasn't that funny.

Slippery Silks (1936) Del Lord

The Three Stooges inherit a rich silk shop but of course they manage to screw it up. The second half of this short, taking place in the silk shop, is rather unfunny, although we're treated to another food fight. The first half has the boys in a wood shop causing all sorts of damage and this is here all the laughs are to be found. Curley falling into the nails and all the gags with the glue are among the highlights.

Amateur Porn Star Killer (2007) Shane Ryan

Each and every year horror fans start hyping up a film saying it's one of the best of the genre and so on. The skies usually falls down as these hyped movies turn out to be shit but that's not the case here. I had never even heard of this movie until I got bored and kept walking around the video store and noticed the naked woman on the DVD cover. I read the mini-reviews scattered across the front and back cover so I decided to give the film a shot and it was certainly worth it. The film is more psychological drama than horror but no matter which genre the film works.

A man (Shane Ryan) lures a 13-year-old girl (Michiko Jimenez) to a hotel room for what she thinks is to make an amateur porn movie but soon, as she begins to feel uncomfortable, she knows something else is going on. The set up is simple but the style is what really pushes this film over the edge. This is another film that tries to be a snuff movie and it actually works here but I'm sure a lot will blow their brains out. The whole style of the film is that the movie looks like a real, low budget movie with splices on the print, the darkness goes up and down, tape rolls and other things. This will annoy most but it does work in making the film look and feel like a real snuff movie. It's ugly to look at and sometimes the audio is hard to hear but this just captures what a real snuff film would probably look like. The film is meant to be a warning to women about going places with men that they don't know and this simple idea works very well. The film runs 71-minutes and 68-minutes of that time is shot in "real time" as we see the two enter the room, start talking, slowly taking their clothes off and so on. There's a real oral sex scene and the film isn't shy about the nudity but all of it is done in a grungy way, just like what we'd expect the snuff film to be.

The film runs very short but with the lack of any real editing it just adds to the movie. Apparently this was shot in a couple hours for $45 and it looks it. That's not a bad thing either. The film opens with a small scene in the car and then we hit the hotel room where we get a forty-minute scene done without any edits and then another thirty-minute scene without edits. The film plays very smoothly and you really get the feeling that you're watching a real video that's uncut. Star and director Ryan does a very good job in both departments and his acting was pretty damn good. He does a great job at playing this creep who starts off like a girl's dream but slowly turns to the psychopath that he is. Jimenez gives a terrific performance as the young virgin who gets in over her head. I was rather shocked at how great she was and considering there aren't any edits or double takes, the fact that she was able to stay in character and go with the story ranks this performance as one of the best I've seen in 2007. Shane, the director, does a terrific job with the visual style, although again, the bad quality will probably bug some. If we're going to call this a horror movie then it's one of the best I've seen in a very long time and like the films of the 70s, its point is to shock you and that it does very well.

IMDB Reviews

PatW

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

King Kong (2005)

A re-telling of that giant ape story this time in the capable hands of Peter Jackson. I think we all know what the story is about so I won't go into that here. The cinematography and special effects are great but the story is over-long. When I saw this in the theatre I was fascinated but with repeat viewings parts of it are boring. It took too long to get to the meat of the story. Ann and her relationship with Kong are well fleshed unlike her relationship with Jack Driscoll. Adrien Brody is an amazing actor but I think he's miscasted as the romantic lead. The menace was taken out of Kong and he was nothing more than an over-grown teddy bear with fangs. I prefer the protrayal of Kong in the original movie. I thought Jack Black of okay as Carl Denham but the last sentence uttered by him at the end of the movie was just plain lame. Still an enjoyable movie.

42nd Street Freak

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatW King Kong (2005) .

Oh Christ! I can't remember the last time I turned a film off in utter boredom and annoyance....but this made me do it.

Before Kong even escaped an entire movie, based on nothing at all but SHOUTING and SCREAMING and CGI CGI CGI CGI, and PLOT POINTLESS OVERBLOWN SPECTACLE had bashed into my brain and ripped out my eyeballs with all this 'look what we can do with our little computer play set' rubbish that still managed, despite all the ear shredding, retina blasting......AGAGAGAGAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAGAGAGGGAGAAAA HHHHAAAAAHGGGG..... to be utterly tedious.

Mega budget boredom unheard of played out before my eyes and I fucking hated the fact that the now slimline Jackson in the flesh had turned into a fat, overblown, obnoxious, self-indulgent hack as far as being a Director was concerned.

All the discipline he had shown (for the most part) in his "LOTR" epics had gone here.
Instead he simply threw 90 minutes of dodgy, pointless, CGI hell at us (before we rwally GIT to the 'Kong' plot!) on that damn annoying island with absolutely no worth at all. Either as plot progression OR as simply effective thrills.

It was BAD CGI, used too much, in the wrong way, for too long and Jackson it seems could care less about making a film and more about the Playstation adaptation to come.

Knowing how King Kong plays out due to the other, half the fucking length to tell the exact same story, versions I turned it off in New York as I had seen the clips and could not sit through anymore of this overblown, bloated, self-indulgent CGI garbage passing itself off as a movie.

Jackson needs to seriously go back to his low budget, lean, mean, roots.
As quite frankly not only would the Jackson who made such lean classics as "Bad Taste" and "Meet the Feebles" be ashamed of the Jackson who had crapped out "King Kong", but the guided and disciplined Jackson who made the epic "LOTR" movies would also be ashamed at this bloated monstrosity he had become.

NEW REVIEWS: "Payroll"/"The Night Porter"/"A Day at the Races"

Joe Karlosi

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

You mean you didn't get to see the Kong ice skaing sequence with our loving and affectionate leading lady? Lucky you!

Here are my thoughts on this thing:



Peter Jackson has said he's a great fan of the original 1933 classic, and yet he's gone ahead and "re"-re-made it, this occasion being even more needless than the first time it was attempted in 1976. As far as I'm concerned, the best way for a filmmaker to express his alleged respect for an original classic is to just leave it the hell alone. That said, I did approach this over-inflated wink to Kong with an open mind, because I've been wrong before about a minority of these unnecessary re-do's in the past. But not this time.

KING KONG 2005 (and oh, how I despise having to always go through the trouble of adding a specific year onto a movie's title nowadays just to be able to decipher which of the renditions I'm speaking about) is only "fair" at best, and nothing more. The movie is way too long, because it "feels" too long. This is a story that easily could have lost an hour and emerged all the better for it. The first hour in particular is too padded and chock full of extraneous subplots we don't need.

Jack Black is a horrible choice as Carl Denham (the man who brings Kong to New York) but he does do a capable job of portraying the character as a sleazy and unlikable sort of louse. But the question then arises as to whether or not one wants to see Carl Denham portrayed as completely unscrupulous or not. Personally, I don't.

Adrien Brody's hero might as well have been written out of the film; he's given very little to do and serves no real purpose. So that takes care of that. Naomi Watts was the best cast of this new crew, though her modernized character here displays far too much fondness for the big lug and not nearly enough primal fear (if any at all!). One of the more cringe-worthy sequences from the other 1976 retread was when Jessica Lange asked King Kong what his astrological sign was, and then called him a "male chauvinist pig ape!" and told him to "eat her and choke on her!". Well, this new Peter Jackson movie doesn't fare too much better in this department, as there's a ludicrous scene where Naomi tries to win Kong over by dancing, doing cartwheels, and even juggling rocks for the monster ape! Another silly moment occurs later in New York City where Kong and his lady take time out from what's supposed to be the gorilla's intense and deadly rampage to do a little cutsey ice skating in Central Park. "Kong On Ice" -- Oh, brother.

The CGI effects were hit and miss -- King Kong himself was very realistic and appeared incredibly detailed at times, but a lot of the jungle scenes looked cartoonish. Either way, there were far too many assaulting effects sequences which tend to bore rather than thrill. Too much overkill in the case of a multi-dinosaur stampede. By the time we mercifully got to the third act in Manhattan I was so numb from CG overindulgence that I was beyond fascination. And though I realize that we have to suspend our disbelief while watching a fantasy such as this, it's still inconceivable to me that Watts' damsel-not-in-distress wouldn't have broken an arm or snapped her neck during some of those violent swings to and fro while in Kong's hand during the gorilla's many violent battles. Heck, she could have been hurt or killed even by innocent play from Kong, though her laid back demeanor would never give you a hint that this ever crosses her mind nor concerns her. This is especially true for the puke-worthy climax where Watts risks her life atop the Empire State Building to protect Kong, in an ending that can't hold a candle to the first film's.

I have to wonder where the "love" for the original film is evident, when Peter Jackson is too ashamed to use the original 1930's dialogue, even though he intentionally set his story in that same decade! Men back then on ships often said things like "you women are nothing but trouble", but here Jackson caves in to the 21st Century by using this type of talk as a laugh, only allowing it to be spoken in the context of a fictional film Denham is making with his actors. Similarily, the extravagant "native dance" that was so effective in the '33 classic is now resigned to a hokey and gimmicky stage number on Broadway. Some of the original dialogue is uttered by Jack Black, but he's no Robert Armstrong and in his hands it comes out as forced and obligatory.

This was worth looking at once, but it's not something I'll ever want to see again. It's too big, too bloated, and complete Overkill. In fact, if you would have told me that someone else made this film other than Peter Jackson and was a director who wasn't necessarily a big fan of the original '33 classic, I'd believe you.

PatW

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

Over-passionate aren't we? We can't all like the same things or else life would be boring. Your cup of tea might not be mine.

42nd Street Freak

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2008)

[quote=PatW]Over-passionate aren't we?

We can't all like the same things or else life would be boring.

Did I mention you? Did I say you were wrong? Did I attack you in any way at all?
Did I say we should all like the same things?

No.
I just gave my view. As you gave yours.

In fact the only one stating how I should approach anything is YOU with that first sentence.
A bit over-passionate in how someone else writes about their feelings on a film aren't we?
I guess I can hate and get angered by "king Kong" as much as I like and with as much passion as I like. Can't I?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PatW Your cup of tea might not be mine.

Er...right...groovy. I never said it had to be though did I.

Blimey, its like walking on bleedin' eggshells around here if anything a bit more 'passionate' than an 'Entertainment Tonight' cue card is posted.

NEW REVIEWS: "Payroll"/"The Night Porter"/"A Day at the Races"