Ok, Aiden over at Cut The Crap Movies tagged me, I'm tagged, I have to reveal my most personal movie related secrets about myself to the three people that read my site.
10) I don't know much about movies. I've seen what I've seen and I'm happy with that. I think I've seen alot of movies, but I can't quite gauge where I am in the spectrum of movie knowledge. In my daily dealings with people, I don't come across many genuine movie buffs, so it's hard to say, but if I ever ended up in genuine movie geek company I reckon I'd have to BS my way through most of the conversation.
9) My earliest memory of watching a movie was going to a drive-in in Durban, South Africa (born and bred there now living in Ireland) I think to watch one the Ninja Turtle movies. Can't remember which. All I remember was Ninja Turtles, and falling asleep before it started, and I think I just woke up to catch the ending. Oh and Michelangelo was my favourite.
He's definitely cooler than this dude
8) Cool Hand Luke changed my life. You know when times are tough, your toast falls butter side down, you can't find your keys, things just don't go your way, you just put up with things. Well watching Cool Hand Luke was like waking up and saying "f*&%K it!" I'm not gonna put up with this crap no more! Like Luke did. He wasn't gonna let Dragline beat him, and just basically not take any crap from anybody, especially no Boss's!
7) I've never met anyone in the movie making business who's famous. The most famous person I've seen in close proximity is probably Stephen Hunt who was playing for Premier League club Reading at the time. Don't you wish you were me.
6) I loved The Neverending Story when I was a young. Why? I cannot even begin to imagine, and I'm actually quite pissed off now that I liked it so much. Why couldn't I have been cooler as a kid????
5) I prefer watching the classics but I watch new crappy releases just to be in the know.
4) I actually liked Avatar alot. Just didn't like the way Cameron threw alot of money at it kinda expecting an Oscar from it. But liked the movie alot. I think the characters were very complex!
3) I want to be Quentin Tarantino!
2) I have about 40 dvds in my massive, huge movie collection. I can't even get in and out of my room it gets so cluttered. But mostly I watch my movies on Sky Movies.
1) Drumroll.........................and now for Jimbob's most personal movie related secret.....................I think John Wayne was better than Clint Eastwood. Clint is awesome as hell, but no one can top a character like John T. Chance in a western in my opinion.
The Misfits is a film directed by John Huston and is quite an odd film to watch, but for the most part it keeps you glued to the screen. The cast is just brilliant: Clarke Gable(his last film), Marilyn Monroe(her last film), Montgomery Clift(he was awesome in Red River and quite good in this) and the crazy dude from The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Eli Wallach.
So what we have here is: Roslyn Taber (Monroe) is this kind of character who is fed up with the way life has turned out for her, and is lookin for meaning in life and blah blah all that. She's in Reno to divorce her rich businessman husband who was never "there" for her. "There" meaning that he never talked to her or they never really got to know eachother boo hoo. Gay Langland (Gable) and Guido(crazy fella from The Good the Bad and the Ugly) are these aging cowboy types. "The west has gone! The east has arrived! Now we'll have to earn wages! Goodbye to the cowboy lifestyle! No more cattle drives! Oh no!" That kind of thing.
So the aging cowboys get by in life by catching wild mustangs that are too small for rodeos, so they get made into dog food. Pretty sad actually. In thier younger days they would have sold the horses for actual transport purposes, but with the arrival of the demon machines, gasoline engine mechnaical beasts, horse transpotation soon became obsolete, and the horses soon became dog food. So what was once exciting and a decent living for the two cowboys has now become something terrible, horses->dogfood.
Well the cowboys and Roslyn(and her friend) meet in a restaurant, and strangely they all just decide to go live in Guido's(Wallach) house in the desert for a while. Well with Marilyn Monroe being amazingly hot, the two cowboys just want to get it on with her, and she being really naive this is what happens. The rest of the film is just about how terrible their lives have become, them trying to "find" themselves, and Roslyn getting hella pissed off at what the cowboys do for a living. It's worth a watch, but it is quite depressing at the same time. It was suppose to have been a classic, what with he great cast and director and good writer and all, but never really lived up to it's potential. Marilyn Monroe is hot.
Well this was OK, not the greatest thing I've ever watched but watchable enough. You could get slightly tempted to reach for the remote and switch the channel, but the movie never really pushes you that far. It's got Val Kilmer, an actress who I was convinced was Selma Blair who's not Selma Blair, and.....that's about it. There's a few other actors who I just won't care to mention, since I really haven't a clue who they are.
OK so this is a "college kids having fun with science" type of movie. Yay how fun. I don't know. I can't understand the idea of science being fun, at all. Unless there was some huge chemical disaster turning people into zombies, I am just not interested. More lab disasters in school would have spiced things up alot. But alas it just wasn't meant to be.
So as simply as possible, the plot: There's a 15 year old kid genius, there's a college professor who's been hired by the CIA to build a laser beam that zaps people from space, and there's Val Kilmer's character who is a genius but says "heck I want to be cool!" so goofs around alot. A genius who's hip with the young crowd. So the professor wants them to build this Laser beam contraption all under the pretence that it's their course work. But soon they find out they're building a device that is designed to kill and the rest of the plot is shaped around that.
It's OK. Val Kilmer's character was just too hip for my liking. I got the fact that he wanted to be cool, doesn't everybody, and not such a stressed out academic type, but most of the time he just tried too hard. Like, he'd be an OK guy to hand around with once in a while, but hang around him too long and I'd really just get annoyed that he was trying to be cool all the time. Take a rest, just be normal!
Overall, I couldn't care less, watch it, don't watch it. It's just OK.
Kick-Ass, ya another comic book adaptation, is directed by Matthew Vaughn and is really, really good. Watching the trailer we see Mclovin dressed in his Red Mist costume jumping off of a dumpster hurting his foot "ow, that kinda hurt!", and we get the feeling that this is gonna be one long superhero movie piss take. But that's really far from the truth of it. It actually takes itself seriously.
Another line from the trailer :"How come nobody's ever tried to become a superhero?" to which his buddy replies "Dude, if anyone did it in real life they'd get there ass kicked. They'd be dead, like, in a day". Ok so we get the feeling that this film is based in real life, and this guy, Dave Lizewski, is gonna try his hand at costumed crime fighting. So we're interested from the get go. Maybe we'll get to see how this would work if someone actually tried it. It would be really cool to see. And what happens? He gets his ass beaten again and again, and it's quite funny, but at the same time you feel kinda sad for him. Like he's so sick of being mugged all the time, that he invents the superhero character for himself to fight back at "life", but life just kicks his ass even harder.
But it's really cool the way that he trudges on. He's stabbed in the stomach(ya this is real life buddy) but he just says "F*&$K it!" and carries on the dream. While out on a major superhero mission to find a missing cat, he unwittingly gets involved in a gang brawl. At first he reacts like any normal human being would, he's afraid to do anything while one guy gets punched and nearly kicked to death. But after a moments thought(or moments insanity) he turns into his superhero character, Kick-Ass. And for the next two minutes he gets his ass whooped. But after a while he kinda gets into the swing of things, and delivers his own ass kicking moves on the thugs. Someone in the diner yells "Hey there's a guy dressed up as a superhero fighting a bunch of guys!" and everyone in the diner rushes out to watch the craziness, recording the action on their mobile phones. Kick-Ass actually drives the thugs away with his crude crime fighting techniques (just him swinging sticks around wildly basically). The video appears on YouTube: an Internet sensation is born!
From the reviews I had read before watching the film, I had heard that Hit-Girl was really the star of the show, and I kept waiting and waiting for her appearance. And finally she arrived. So Hit-Girl is like twelve years old, and cusses like a person that cusses alot. Now she's the real deal. She actually IS a superhero, no super powers, except for her unnatural ass kicking ability which works just fine. Her father, Big-Daddy(Nick Cage-quite good in this actually) has raised her to kill. He himself dresses like Batman and actually kills lots of bad guys. So from the realm of reality that we thought we were in, here are two genuine superheros who enter the picture. "What the hell?" I asked.
This is where alot of people had problems with the film. Wasn't it supposed to be about a real guy tring to become a superhero? And failing? Suddenly it turns into an actual superhero movie. People start dodging bullets. Wasn't this all supposed to be plausible? No. The thing is that it was always a superhero movie. Kick-Ass, real name Dave Lizewski, is a normal guy IN A SUPERHERO STORY! It still turns out to be really entertaining, and Hit-Girl IS the star of the show.
It might have been nice to go with the Dave Lizewski turning into Kick-Ass as the main focus of the story, and have it end on a realistic note, and that would have been a great movie to see. However the way it really turns out is still really good. The dialogue is really funny. It's like watching Superbad again. The action is really impressive for an Indie film on a budget of only $28 million. The music is great! The theme music from For a Few Dollars More rears it's melodic head, and is really well done, and I felt that it really fit the scene well. There's Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation", and again it gels really well with the scene. Throw in some Prodigy as well and you have a classic soundtrack. And a really good film.
This film was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1987, six years after his previous film. It's about a boy named Puyi who was made emperor of China when he was 3 years old. And it's really good. It was the first time ever that a film was given permission to shoot footage inside of the Forbidden City, the actual place where this guy lived.
Puyi is made emperor of China in 1908, when he is just three years old. But it's just out of convenience really, China now has a president who controls the show. Puyi can do what ever he wants except leave the grounds of the Forbidden City. Why? I don't know. Powerful people like to make rules like this. So at 7 years old (big word alert) he abdicates the thrown. So he gives up what little power he had, which was like none. A Scottish tutor, played by Peter O'Toole, arrives to educate the boy on all of life's lessons. He's a worldly knowing type, whereas Puyi only knows about the goings on of his prison like home. So Puyi is impressed by the tutor, and now wants to "spread his wings" and fly the coop. He wants to be a modern man with a modern wife who can dance.
When Puyi is in his 20s he is forced to leave the Forbidden City. So happy days, that's what he wanted. He moves to Japan, because the emperor there is the same age as him and they become buddy buddy with each other. Puyi turns into that "Asian trying to be a Westerner type" and we see him with a western style haircut, he refers to his wife now as Elizabeth, and we see him in a tux leaning against a piano crooning to some hip western tune.
Japan has an agenda going meanwhile. They want to take over Manchuria from the Russians, as a strategic base for when they bomb the Chinese. They're gonna set up Puyi(Manchuria was his birthplace) as a puppet ruler. Puyi thinks that the Japanese are just doing him a good turn. When this happens(alot of Chinese are killed under Puyi's "return" in the process), the Japanese slowly start to take more and more control of the running of things. Puyi got played. Then the Russians land and take Puyi as prisoner. Things rapidly go downhill for ol Pu man. He's transferred as a war criminal into Chinese hands, where he will enter a re-education camp.
So he's being re-educated as well as being interrogated in this camp, and the story of his life is told through these long flashbacks that make up the entire film. It really is brilliantly done. John Lone does a great job portraying Puyi from the age of 20 or so on. The scenery is really amazing. The constant yellow and red colouring of the Chin Dynasty is seen throughout his childhood, and the flushed out colour of his time in the prison camp gives you that depressed, sick of life, everything is terrible feeling. The costumes are brilliant and really make you feel like you're seeing the real thing. The only complaint is that the Chinese spoke plain English. I can read subtitles! Make them talk Chinese and let it be authentic!! But I got over that soon as this is a really awesome film!
Tony Manero is a Chilean film directed by Pablo Larraín, and it's about a guy who's obsessed with John Travolta's character in "Saturday Night Fever". It's one odd film. But brilliant at the same time.
Alfredo Castro plays Raúl, a guy that has a one track mind. To the escape the brutal realities of Pinochet's Chile in 1978, he tries to become his idol, Tony Manero. At the start we see him waiting outside of a local television set. He's there to become Chile's next "Tony Manero" in a dance off competition, the top prize is a blender. But he's got it wrong, this week is the best Chuck Norris lookalike competition, the Tony Manero Dance Off is next week. Now this guy is a walking zombie. There's no emotion from him. He doesn't get angry, but is just like "OK" and walks off. You never know what he's really thinking, or if he's even thinking at all. There's no emotion whatsoever.
So he's got a week to kill before his television appearance. He's got no job. And I assume that he just sponges off of people to get by. He is one seriously dislikable character. Sitting in his apartment, he hears commotion outside. A couple of thugs have robbed an old lady. Raúl runs downstairs to help, or so we think anyway. She's so grateful to him that she invites him for tea. After a while, having eyed the colour television set, he bashes the old lady's brains in. Seriously this comes straight out of left field. I never saw it coming. It is seriously disturbing.
What Raúl does for a living is dance. He's in charge of a low rent dance troop that practices Tony Manero's dance routine. Two of the dancers show him a couple of original moves that they have come up with to add to the show but Raúl replies "That's not in the movie!". He's got a serious case of assholeness. So they practice and practice and now they get their chance to perform for like 8 or 9 people lookin for cheap entertainment. Raúl has constructed a glass dance floor that glows from beneath just like in "Saturday Night Fever"(well not exactly alike but that's what he thinks) as well as his own disco ball(a soccer ball with broken bits of mirror stuck to it). You just have to applaud the guy for his effort.
But there's that really, really dark side to Raúl. He'll do anything to improve his standing in the world, including murdering an old lady as I've already said. When his local cinema starts showing "Grease" instead of "Saturday Night Fever" he flips his carrot and murders the projectionist. When he's buying the glass for his dance floor, he murders the seller because he hasn't enough money. And there is absolutely no emotional reaction at all when he does these things.
There's also a really great parallel drawn by the film. Raúl represents Chile in a way, and the search for it's identity. In the film notes the director talks about the way in which "Chile has blood on it's hands, but tries it's best to be trendy and stylish, dancing under flashing strobe lights all in the name of progress". Raúl never reflects on the things he has done. He's always on the lookout for the next best thing to improve his standing. He thinks that by pretending to be Tony Manero, that all his problems will disappear. But they're all hollow dreams. He lives in fantasy land, and never deals with reality.
Overall this is one seriously interesting film. There's very few things to laugh at, but I'd say after a while when you think back over it you'll be in stitches laughing. It's like experiencing a really horrible incident, but thinking back over it a month or two later it sounds hilarious. But very, very, very disturbing at the time.
Well, well Shutter Island. I love this film. I am actually in love with it. Everything about it is pure genius. Martin Scorsese is the effin man. Can I praise it any more? Will I praise it any more? Yes and yes. Scorsese is simply a master at storytelling. There's few films that have this sort of effect on me. Chinatown, There Will Be Blood, Kill Bill 2 were examples and now I'll add this mo foer of a masterpiece to that list. Everything about it blew me away and I'm not being pretentious about that.
Where to start? Honestly. It's fantastically amazing! OK I'll try and tone down the excitement already. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S Marshall sent to Shutter Island. On this island is Ashecliff Hospital, it houses the criminally insane. Apparently, one of the inmates(a woman that drowned her three children) has escaped, or more to the point seems to have vanished into thin air. He has been sent here along with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate her disappearance. The head honcho on the island is Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), this smart academic type who has a smell of Nazi about him. As Teddy interviews some of the nutters, he begins to grow more and more suspicious of the hospital's psychotherapy treatments. But there's another reason for Teddy being here. He's here to find a man that he believes has killed his wife. Along the way Teddy starts to doubt his own sanity. More and more he starts to distrust everyone around him. And then there's one mother of an ending to top things off.
I'm reminded alot of Hitchcock's movies when I think about this film. Films with great stories and great characters, that delve alot of the time into psychological territory, and shine a light on the madness and violence that live in some people's minds. You start questioning everything in Shutter Island. What's real? What is not? What the hell is going on? But you're always in very safe hands with Scorsese. Sure there's lots of twists and turns along the way but for some reason there's no feeling of total confusion. The basics of it are easy enough to grasp. Well I might be blowing my own trumpet a bit but I found it easy enough to follow. This is one great, great movie.
Home Alone is one of the most entertaining movies I've ever seen. It's directed by Chris Columbus, written by John Hughes(Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and stars Macaulay Culkin as an 8 year old kid left at home alone. There's alot of mixed views on this one, and you'll either love it or hate it. I can't believe that someone could actually hate a film like this.
Kevin McCallister(Culkin) is left behind accidentally as his parents and 8 other siblings fly out to Paris for a holiday. He hasn't been getting on with his family recently, and is over the moon about being left alone for once in his life. Two bumbling burglars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern pay a visit to the neighbourhood, aware that there'll be a few empty houses over the festive period. Kevin decides to take a stand and defend his house at all costs. Why didn't he just ring the police you say? Who'd really like to see that film?
Ok, now for some of the arguments against the film. "The film is contrived in every detail". What films aren't contrived? Films are inherently unnatural due to the fact that.........they're not real!!! So the tarantula is conveniently placed on the stairs in front of Kevin when Daniel Stern is pulling at his leg. So all the realist boring people out there are saying "That would never happen!!!! How convenient!!! So contrived!! OOooohh I hate it so much!" Come on.
Another one: "The film is incredibly violent". An iron hits Daniel Stern on the head "Oh my God!!! It's just too horrific for my eyes!!" Wait a minute, Wile E. Coyote gets flattened with a giant boulder in nearly every episode. "Why wasn't that show pulled from kids television, it's so violent!" Why not? Because this world would be an incredibly boring place if these people were in charge.
"Macaulay Culkin's acting was unnatural" another person said. He was like 10 years old!!!!! I can't believe that someone would take a person of that age's acting so seriously.
The reason that I haven't concentrated on the actual film, and rather on the reactions to it, were most of the reviews posted by super highly, intellectual people who look for the bad in everything while trying to impress people with negativity. Rather than just giving an honest opinion on something, they have to intellectualize it to death. And now I'm just extremely bitter because of it!!! Approved Tomatometer critics at Rottentomatoes gave the film an aggregate score of 47%!!! Read some of the reviews. They're hilarious.
The reasons why I loved the film? The film is honest with itself. It knows that it's being sentimental, and it's aware that it looks contrived and says to hell with it!!!! Let's just believe in it as long as the film lasts. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are magnificent. The theme of everyone being against Kevin, and Kevin taking on "the world"(well I think that's how he sees it) is brilliantly done. The slapstick comedy is hilarious!! The tarantula on Daniel Stern's face is one of the funniest scenes I have seen in my entire life!! Daniel Stern's performance was the icing on the cake to this already brilliant film. The tone of it all is just fantastic. It just seems very optimistic, an innocent blah blah blah. It really is just a great, great film.
Jerry Maguire is directed by Cameron Crowe, and has a stellar cast consisting of Tom Cruise, Renée Zellweger, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Jonathan Lipnicki. This is a great movie with a few moral lessons thrown into the mix without being all preachy about it.
Tom Cruise plays Jerry Maguire, a hot shot sports agent who one day developes a conscience. He's tired of being just another "shark in a suit" and he wants to feel the way he did when he first started out in the business. So he writes a new mission statement for his company: "The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business". It's his brutally honest thoughts on the state of the agent trade. So everyone's so impressed with his memo, but a week after writing it he's fired by Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr), a man who's career he helped build. Adding to the insult of it all, Bob Sugar steals most of Jerry's players except for football superstar Frank Cushman, and the lesser known, trash talking Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr). Jerry starts his own agent business with the help of Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger), and a bit of romance developes. Jerry must fight to keep his career alive, and keep his players from abandoning him.
This movie starts off where most movies end. It explores the aftermath of making the breakthrough of deciding to stay true to oneself, and being honest and all that saintly, heavenly stuff. It's saying that it's not a walk in the park once you decide to do it. People take advantage of honest Jerry. So Jerry must learn how to play the game, while still trying to be "Jerry". What happens is that there isn't a complete transition from slimey, money worshipping Jerry to upstanding, do the right thing all the time Jerry. He becomes a slightly better person, but he's still a money hungry agent. He's just trying to be very successful on his own terms.
The casting is excellent. Cuba Gooding, Jr. is brilliant as the loudmouthed, cocky Rod Tidwell, and his award for best supporting actor was well deserved. Renée Zellweger has her usual charm. Tom Cruise was an excellent choice. He normally plays that asshole that gets everything that he wants, but here he's at his best where he's that asshole who has come to the realisation that he's an utter moron, and decides to change. All in all, I'd give it a 8/10.
The Man with Two Brains is directed by Carl Reiner and stars Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner. It's a spoof of mad scientist movies. If you're not a fan of those types of movies some of the jokes will fly over your head, but there's still enough non- referenced humour to laugh at.
Steve Martin plays Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, a mad scientist that has developed a new type of brain surgury. He screws off the tops of his patients heads to make things easy peasy japaneasy while he works his magic on thier brains. Kathleen Turner plays a gold digging biatch from hell, Dolores Benedict. Hfuhruhurr knocks her down with his Mercedes, and has to perform brain surgory on the lovely Dolores. The operation is successful and the two fall in love and get married, and everything is hunky dory, ....or so it seems. Dum, dum,duuuum. Dolores is only after his money, Hfuhruhurr falls in love with a brain in a jar, and somewhere thrown into the mix is an elavator serial killer who injects people with window cleaner. Will we find out who the serial killer is? Will Hfuhruhurr and Dolores's relationship last? Will Hfuhruhurr's love affair with the brain in the jar be found out? Dum, Dum, Duuuum.
It's actually really, really funny for the first hour or so. Then the laughter peters out but it's still interesting enough to watch. This is the funniest I've ever seen Steve Martin. Kathleen Turner is savagely sexy, and spoofs her sultry image of that time quite well. It's just very enjoyable and there's nothing to really hate about it. I'd give it a 7/10.
9) My earliest memory of watching a movie was going to a drive-in in Durban, South Africa (born and bred there now living in Ireland) I think to watch one the Ninja Turtle movies. Can't remember which. All I remember was Ninja Turtles, and falling asleep before it started, and I think I just woke up to catch the ending. Oh and Michelangelo was my favourite.
He's definitely cooler than this dude
8) Cool Hand Luke changed my life. You know when times are tough, your toast falls butter side down, you can't find your keys, things just don't go your way, you just put up with things. Well watching Cool Hand Luke was like waking up and saying "f*&%K it!" I'm not gonna put up with this crap no more! Like Luke did. He wasn't gonna let Dragline beat him, and just basically not take any crap from anybody, especially no Boss's!
7) I've never met anyone in the movie making business who's famous. The most famous person I've seen in close proximity is probably Stephen Hunt who was playing for Premier League club Reading at the time. Don't you wish you were me.
6) I loved The Neverending Story when I was a young. Why? I cannot even begin to imagine, and I'm actually quite pissed off now that I liked it so much. Why couldn't I have been cooler as a kid????
5) I prefer watching the classics but I watch new crappy releases just to be in the know.
4) I actually liked Avatar alot. Just didn't like the way Cameron threw alot of money at it kinda expecting an Oscar from it. But liked the movie alot. I think the characters were very complex!
3) I want to be Quentin Tarantino!
2) I have about 40 dvds in my massive, huge movie collection. I can't even get in and out of my room it gets so cluttered. But mostly I watch my movies on Sky Movies.
1) Drumroll.........................and now for Jimbob's most personal movie related secret.....................I think John Wayne was better than Clint Eastwood. Clint is awesome as hell, but no one can top a character like John T. Chance in a western in my opinion.
