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Sarah Paulson recommended Frances (1982) in Movies (curated)

 
Frances (1982)
Frances (1982)
1982 | Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Frances, starring Jessica Lange, is one of those movies that for me was quite connected to my wanting to be an actor. I had obviously been to the movies many times as a young person, but I think I was about 14, or 15 when I was at home on a Sunday, and this movie … I turned a channel, and it was on cable, or whatever cable was at that time. And it was midway through the movie, and I just was transfixed and went out, back when we could go to the video store, and I rented it, so I could watch it from the beginning. And to me, it’s just an extraordinary portrait of an actress. Frances Farmer, I didn’t have knowledge about her and her work, but also whatever I knew of her working-wise, I certainly didn’t know anything about her real life, which is really tragic, and a painful movie to watch. Jessica Lange gives one of the greatest performances, and it was my introduction to Kim Stanley, who is actually the screensaver on one of my cell phones. [The pictures is] from her performance in Bus Stop, not from Frances; it’s just been on my phone for I don’t even know how long. And just again, there’s a thematic thread here [with Frances]: it’s another story about mother and daughter. At its core that’s what it’s about. And I just find it incredibly powerful. It was just like watching two acting titans and thinking, “Oh, if that’s what acting is, I want to do that.” And of course, I’ve come to learn that a lot of times acting doesn’t get to be that, but every once in a while you get to touch on that, and it was really inspiring – and another movie poster I had in house."

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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
2008 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Old Indy: Nuke The CGI Refrigeror
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull- is the fourth indiana movie. I wish their didnt make a fourth movie, cause in my opinion and others the trilogy as a whole was and is perfect. The third movie was called, "The Last Crusade", so it should of been the last, but nope. Over 20's year, their had to make anethor one. Thanks Steven, George and Harrison, cause we really needed anethor one. With CGI Gophers, Monkey's, Aliens, and also Indiana surviving a atomic bomb test by hiding in a refrigator and surviving. Ya, no. He should be dead. Relying on to much CGI, pointless charcters, plot and a terrible ending. This movie doesnt live up to the oringal trilogy.

The plot: It's the height of the Cold War, and famous archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), returning from his latest adventure, finds out his job at Marshall College is in jeopardy. He meets Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), a young man who wants Indy to help him find the legendary Crystal Skull of Akator, and the pair set out for Peru. However, deadly agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) is searching for the powerful artifact, too, because the Soviets believe it can help them conquer the world.

I mean the action was good, the adventure was good and Cate Blanchett was good as the villian, everything else was bad.

But at the same time though its always good to see Indiana and his adventures. To see Indiana back after all these years, did put a smile on my face. Old Indiana.

Though in my opinon, just watch the oringal trilogy, its 10x better than this garbage. I mean this bomb. Atomic Bomb, boom got them. Seriously, dont watch this one, its bad.
  
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Sarah (7800 KP) May 26, 2020

5 seems rather generous considering you've said it's awful! 😆

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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) May 26, 2020 (Updated May 26, 2020)

Yea, maybe a 4 than. I did like the action, the comedy, the adventure, Harrision and Cate and thats it. Just it was good see anethor Indiana film though.

The Host (Gwoemul) (2007)
The Host (Gwoemul) (2007)
2007 | Action, Horror, International
Darn formaldehyde!
Guess what happens when a scientist orders a large amount of formaldehyde dumped down the drain? It makes its way through the sewer system and into the Han River in Korea. Several years later, it is revealed the substance has caused the mutated formation of a large sea monster creature which reveals itself when it emerges and begins an onslaught of carnage.

A local family which runs a food stand near the location of the attack races to get to safety, but, unfortunately a man grabs the hand of the wrong child instead of his daughter by mistake. The creature procures the young child and escapes with her back into the water. Further chaos ensues when it is revealed the creature is not only a menace, but also the source of a horrible infectious disease now rampant among the population.

Somehow, the child survives her journey back in the sewers with the creature who deposits her in a secluded location. Her father now has to get past government quarantine and survive battling the creature in order to try and save his child.



Director Bong Joon-ho, who has also given us the fantastic Snowpiercer and the current critic favorite Parasite, crafts a well made film which has many exciting elements.

For a movie like this it is only as good as its creature and this one does the job. Despite having a modest budget, the sea creature is well developed, has an interesting personality and does not look like bad CGI. As the audience, you are trying to figure out what the creature wants, what it is doing with the children it kidnaps and stores away while also rooting for the title family to not only survive the disease and run ins with the police to eventually attempt a rescue.

There is a good amount of action including a few intense scenes with the creature and also with one of the family members who also happens to be a famed archer. There is some comedy as well which rounds out the action and provides some down time between scenes.

I really enjoyed The Host much more than I thought I would since I hadn't heard much about it beforehand. Please check it out.

  
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018)
2018 | Adventure, Drama
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is a fantasticly B-Movie style title, hiding a genuinely touching and quite beautiful character drama.

The film focuses on the life of Calvin Barr, an old man portrayed by Sam Elliott. He's a guy who's lonely, seen some shit in his time, and feeling his age until one day, he's approached by the government to hunt and kill the legendary Bigfoot, and put a stop to a potential world ending plague. Calvin is a bit of a legendary creature himself, having served in WWII, and is said to have killed Hitler himself before it was covered up, and his immunity to this killer plague makes him the perfect candidate.
This quirky other wordly narrative is quite a jarring contrast to the otherwise grounded drama that makes up the rest of the plot. Flashbacks tell of Calvin's life before the war, and how he met the woman he wanted to marry. It's essentially a love story, that veers into bonkers territory at the flick of a switch.

Somehow though, it all works really well. The screenplay is top notch and gives us some engaging characters with a great cast. Sam Elliott has the grizzled old man role down to a tee by now. Aidan Turner plays the younger Calvin, and the relationship between him and Caitlin Fitzgerald's character is believable and touching. Larry Miller also stars as Calvin's brother and the two of them also have decent chemistry.
This movie is overflowing with gorgeous shots. The last third especially is a visual feast, and it's all complimented by a wonderful score, courtesy of Joe Kraemer.

If you're looking for a schlocky bad-good film suggested by the title then you're in the wrong place. This is a charming and quirky character drama with sprinkles of a creature feature, and I can fully see why some might not get on with it, but for me, it just works.
  
Your Highness (2011)
Your Highness (2011)
2011 | Comedy
7
6.0 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
For all you minotaur lovers out there, the movie Your Highness is the film for you. Not that the movie is about them but it has the most unique minotaur I have ever seen in a movie. Your Highness takes place long ago in a land far away in a kingdom that has two princes. The oldest and heir-to-the-throne is Prince Fabious (the fabulous James Franco). He is a prince’s prince, a knight’s knight, he enjoys protecting the innocent, he slays evil cyclops and other evil things that should be slayed.

The youngest is Prince Thadeous (film co-writer Danny McBride), he is a slacker’s slacker, a player’s player, he enjoys booze and other mind-altering stuff, he lays with easy maidens and…well, you get the point. Even though the two brothers are so very different they still love each other, even if Thadeous won’t admit it. So when Prince Fabious was to be married to the beautiful yet naive Belladonna (the enchanting Zooey Deschanel) he wanted none other than his younger brother to be his best man.

But fate had other plans and what should have been the happiest of wedding days was ruined when the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux) kidnaps Belladonna so he can produce an evil dragon offspring that he would use to rule the world. The two brothers vow to save her and kill Leezar. Ok, technically Thadeous is told by their father the King (Charles Dance) that either he goes with his older brother or he will be kicked out of the kingdom and it is Fabious who does the vowing. So they ride out with their most trusted knights and along the way they meet the Great Wize (not a typo) Wizard (voiced by Mario Torres. Jr.), the highly skilled fighter Isabel (played by a pretty intimidating Natalie Portman), the Minotaur (Brian Steele, a surprisingly fitting name), forest people (I loved the forest people!). Epic adventure and treachery ensue – dun dun dunn! Will they save Belladonna and the world? Will Thadeous become a respectable prince? Will the minotaur live happily ever after?

The movie is funny but the humor is on par with middle-school-aged male humor so approximately 80% of all adult males will probably find the movie funny and a lot of wives will be wondering why they married them. It also had some decent fight scenes sprinkled throughout the movie. I’ll be honest, there were a couple of scenes in the film that I wish I could un-see… the kind of stuff that never happened in any dice role-playing game that I have ever played.

Now I am sure we have all seen movies where one person’s performance was so well done that it made the other people’s performances seem lacking (whether they truly were or not). To me this movie fell victim to that problem. After all with people like Charles Dance, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Zooey Deschanel and Damian Lewis, who plays Boremont, one of the trusted Knights, it was bound to happen. Overall, a very entertaining and funny movie.
  
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Armie Hammer recommended Cool Hand Luke (1967) in Movies (curated)

 
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
1967 | Classics, Comedy, Drama

"Cool Hand Luke, to me, and I’m not a film historian, but what it feels like to me is it’s in this intersectional point between the glamorization of film and that golden era of Hollywood where everything was meant to look perfect, like all the old Cary Grant movies like His Girl Friday and Arsenic and Old Lace, where everything is supposed to look so nice and everybody’s always impeccably dressed and charming and all that. Cool Hand Luke comes after that, where it’s a more cinema verite realism kind of thing. But also, there are still elements of the older films that you don’t get anymore, like using imagery in a really cool way. Like, there’s one scene where, to inspire a feeling of tension and stress, there’s just a really slow push in on a whirling fan that just keeps whirling and whirling, and I feel like they don’t do that much anymore. Now they have to really pander to the audience, and make sure that they serve up to you exactly what’s going on, instead of using that kind of stuff. Also, Paul Newman is the f—ing best, and he’s so good in that movie, and it’s just cool, man. It’s just a guy who just won’t get beat by the system, and I really like that. There’s so many layers to that movie. It’s one of the few movies that I make sure I keep downloaded on my iPhone or my iPad, just so that I always have it available."

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Awix (3310 KP) rated Shin Godzilla (2016) in Movies

Feb 10, 2018 (Updated Feb 10, 2018)  
Shin Godzilla (2016)
Shin Godzilla (2016)
2016 | Sci-Fi
7
8.2 (5 Ratings)
Movie Rating
He's New, He's True, He's Covered in Goo
Toho's first Godzilla movie since 2004 attempts to square the circle by sticking relatively closely to the feel of the original film while offering a radical new take on Godzilla himself ('Shin', lest you be wondering, is a conveniently ambiguous Japanese word that can mean 'New', 'True', and 'God').

Everyday life in Tokyo is disrupted by the appearance in the bay of a bizarre new form of life, a fast-evolving creature which slithers ashore, causing (but of course) massive property damage, before mutating into something a bit more recognisable as Godzilla. Clearly the government response team have a lot on their hands, but can they come up with a solution before the Americans take charge of the situation and plaster the city with nukes?

Some people may take exception to the movie's very different take on Godzilla (the design of the monster's initial form is unintentionally funny), and it's always a bit of a problem when Godzilla doesn't have anyone to fight in the final reel, but this is still an impressive attempt at a serious Godzilla film that honours the memory of the original. It's also obviously a post-Fukushima movie, fierce in its satire and criticism of useless government bureaucrats and the red tape that surrounds them.

When it all kicks off between Godzilla and the JSDF the special effects sequences are spectacular, and the human characters are quite well-played too. I must confess to missing the sense of fun and imagination that you find in the best Godzilla films - this is kind of like the Batman Begins of Godzilla films, in that it's hard to imagine many of the other classic characters existing in this universe - but this is a smart and serious movie that respects its source material.
  
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Karen Gillan recommended Funny Games (2007) in Movies (curated)

 
Funny Games (2007)
Funny Games (2007)
2007 | Drama, Thriller
6.3 (8 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"This is hard, because it could be many things. I mean, it could be Kubrick, it could be Haneke again. Do I need to mix it up a little bit? I feel like I’ve gone very serious. I think it’s either 2001: A Space Odyssey or Funny Games by Michael Haneke. What I like about Funny Games is a moment, actually, where all of it… OK, I think 2001 is a better movie. However, there’s a moment in Funny Games that’s genius, that I love, which is when he turns to the audience, and suddenly turns the whole movie into this kind of study, where we are accountable as an audience. Because we like the violence that’s happening in the movie, and he’s doing it for us, so suddenly we’re culpable. And I think that’s a really cool moment in film that I haven’t really seen other than that. Yeah, I thought that was really clever. Also, I’m talking the American remake, not the original, because he remade it shot-for-shot for the American audience, which is really interesting, because he made it in German and then it only had so much reach, and then was like, “I want to make this for a society where violence maybe is a little more glamorized.” And I’m not just saying that about Americans; I think we’re the same in the UK, where we really like watching that on-screen. It’s just a really interesting study into that, and so, for that reason, I’m going with that. And one time I hosted a screening where all of our friends came down and watched it, and I have never seen a more depressed group of people in my life, and it was a huge mistake. [laughs] Everyone left immediately. No one hung around after."

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Iron Man 3 (2013)
Iron Man 3 (2013)
2013 | Action, Sci-Fi
The last of Robert Downey Jr's solo outings as the titular Iron Man / Tony Stark, this is also one of the earlier - perhaps even the earliest - entries in the MCUs 'phase 2', i.e. those movies set after 'Avengers Assemble' but before 'age of Ultron' (which ends that phase).

It's also perhaps best remembered for the 'bait and switch' technique it pulled with regards to The Mandarin, the supposed villain of the piece.

Personally, I find it to be one of the weaker entries in the MCU: Tony's issues with PTSD brought about by surviving the wormhole in Avengers Assemble, the Christmassy setting (which marks this as a Shane Black movie), and the kid engineer subplot just didn't really gel all that much with me.
  
The Bravest Man in the Universe by Bobby Womack
The Bravest Man in the Universe by Bobby Womack
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This got quite mixed reviews when it came out [in 2012], but I think it's really affecting. The guy had colon cancer, and when this album is great – I don't love all of it, but I love a lot of it – it's like an old man's reckoning. It's full of apologies and remorse, but still the old Bobby Womack is in there. There's still some disdain, but he's also quite sad, as he knows he's at the end of his life. I love how he sings those lines in 'Please Forgive My Heart': ""I'm a liar/I'm in a dream…"" It's a performance miles away from the swagger of an album like The Poet, which was perhaps his greatest ever record, in 1980. I remember he was seen as the godfather of contemporary soul back then – he got an album of the year in the NME around that time too [for 1984's The Poet II]. But on this record, he's this disjointed elder, and he's also someone else. He's standing in this fragmented terrain of 21st century soul music, this great survivor in a sci-fi movie. What a way to approach the end of your life."

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