Movie Thread

Forever Fredi said:
Interesting that Godfather II did not make it on the list, unless you do what some do and categorize 1 and 2 as the same.
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The first Godfather is superior to second. Sorry: the first is just a much tighter, sharper text. The second is somehow both very, very good (don't get me wrong) and very overrated.

Terrence Malick is the ****. Days of Heaven is probably my favorite film of all time.
 
bravos4evr said:
Loved The Devil's Rejects, it's one of the great horror films of the last 30 years, sadly it's about the only thing Rob Zombie has done worth a re-watch

I reckon they are gonna make another Halloween with him or without him and I'd rather they do it with him, right? I mean, it's not like there's this tower of greatness he has to overcome in the sequels. they got pretty awful by the end.

there is no Naked Gun without the Zucker brothers and Leslie Nielsen

Loved Kingsman, a little apprehensive about the sequel moving to the USA, the britishness was half the damned point and fun of the first one!

I loved Casino Royale and Skyfall, found Quantum a bit thrown together and Spectre effing boring . it had so much potential and it ended up so flat.... I liked Craig as Bond tho, Hiddleston seems to be a little to twee for the role

bagger vance was a decent bio-pic movie but nothing memorable about it.

J-Lo (ugh that nickname) is a talented actress, anyone who has seen Winter's Bone, Silver Linings Playbook or the hunger games movies knows this, but I think she's gotten a little overexposed and done too many movies too soon. But hell, if I were her I would too, women's careers can change fast in Hollywood, might as well cash in while you can.

Snyder ,IMO, would be best served if he never touched a screenplay and he just designed shots. He can make a very pretty movie, but he doesn't do as well with story or characterization. IMO, if you teamed him with a good producer who worked well with actors and story he could be a good part of a directing duo. I loved Watchmen (mainly because it's as good a watchmen as we were ever going to get) but there were still some issues in it with style over substance.
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Devil's Rejects is one of my guilty pleasures. It's such a grotesque movie, but the tone of it pivots so much away from House of 1000 that it stands alone as a purely great horror/drama movie.

Carpenter has already confirmed to be working on the next Halloween. So I'm hoping it is really good.

I haven't seen Spectre yet but the reviews were not great after the Skyfall was great.

I really think you should re-visit Bagger Vance. I watched it several times as a kid, but I've watched it a bunch as an adult, and I tell you the movie has such more meaning to me than I ever noticed as a kid. It's a movie not even about golf anymore to me.
 
jpx7 said:
The first Godfather is superior to second. Sorry: the first is just a much tighter, sharper text. The second is somehow both very, very good (don't get me wrong) and very overrated.

Terrence Malick is the ****. Days of Heaven is probably my favorite film of all time.
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Ugh.

I tell you jpx, the older I get the more I love Godfather II. Godfather I had all the glitz and glamour with the the amazing cast and Brando. GFII though was such a more methodical chess match. Pacino is arguably scarier and better in II, and Fredo's performance gets better everytime I see it. I'm not even including how much more I appreciate the DeNiro Young Vito stuff.

I'd say AT worst they're on even footing now (for me). It used to be GF1 tilted big time, but I really honestly feel right now that GFII is such better storyteling than GFI. Just the locations themselves, The Corleone Compound in Tahoe, the Miami location, the "Cuba" location filmed in the DR, the New York Winter scenes with Pentangelli. Hell the three Senatorial hearings with Cicci, Michael, and ESPECIALLY Pentangelli were so well done.

I'm tempted to say GFII to GFI is 51>49
 
the actual filmmaking is superior in one tho. the score, the wonderful golden photography by Gordon Willis. The ascension of Michael from nerdy war hero little brother to cold and hard godfather of the family...... The 2nd one is great, but it doesn't exist without the first.
 
I take it you weren't a fan of To The Wonder, Tree of Life, and Knight of Cups? I haven't seen Cups yet. To The Wonder is in my blu-ray collection I have yet to open.
 
bravos4evr said:
the actual filmmaking is superior in one tho. the score, the wonderful golden photography by Gordon Willis. The ascension of Michael from nerdy war hero little brother to cold and hard godfather of the family...... The 2nd one is great, but it doesn't exist without the first.
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I don't think that should hurt the 2nd though. I'm a fan of the gloomier photography of the 2nd. The score was arguably just as good if not better than the first.

These three songs alone are better than anything on the first score.
Such a powerful track from when Michael finally "forgave" Fredo at their mother's funeral. The part at 1:44 is so heartbreaking, especially the part you know is when Michael looks at Neri.
Then this one is one of my absolute favorites from when Pentangelli and Hagen were discussing how to save his family and kill himself.
 
I also think the dinner table ending of Part II was so painful to watch, since Fredo was the only one that shook Mike's hand and supported his decision to enlist in the Marines while his other brothers were against it, and it ends up being Fredo the one Michael has killed.

Although I did read that originally the script for GFIII had the central plot of Michael and Tom splitting up and having a bad blood fight with Tom getting killed.
 
Forever Fredi said:
I also think the dinner table ending of Part II was so painful to watch, since Fredo was the only one that shook Mike's hand and supported his decision to enlist in the Marines while his other brothers were against it, and it ends up being Fredo the one Michael has killed.

Although I did read that originally the script for GFIII had the central plot of Michael and Tom splitting up and having a bad blood fight with Tom getting killed.
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That would had been a better story than what they put on film.
 
Krgrecw said:
That would had been a better story than what they put on film.
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Well if you read the behind the scenes politicking going on, Pacino almost didn't wanna do it and Coppola was ready to start GFIII with Michael Corleone's funeral. Pacino then was livid about the idea of Coppola killing off Michael in the beginning that he went with the movie. I also think the reason Hagen wasn't in it was Duvall couldn't get equal money as Pacino, so they wrote him out as already dead and had some other guy be Michael's personal lawyer.

I personally didn't mind the movie. It definitely isn't on the level of 1 and 2 but by itself it's a better movie than the majority of movies out there. I don't know how I would have liked seen Hagen getting Fredo'd as Hagen was probably my favorite character in the movies.
 
The first film is about family as both focus and metaphor tho. The Corleone's as a reflection of organized crime itself. The 2nd film is mostly a "Michael acquired more power and crushes his enemies" film. It's good, don't get me wrong. I do admit to getting a little bored with the Cuba stuff after awhile and I just don't feel the same emotions toward the entire film as i do the first one. I even find that the Fredo thing kinda spits on the central premise of the first film. I don't think Michael would ever have him killed. He would kill Carlo, because he wasn't family. He was an outsider. (like Vito said during the wedding "give him a living, but never discuss the family business with him") The abortion thing seemed a little "cause of the moment" too.

I like part 2, but if I was ranking them out of 100 pts, part one gets 99 and part two gets an 88-90.
 
Part 3 needed some more work on the screenplay as it needed more meat in the bones of the inernational immobilaire deal, less tacked on love interest sub-plot with his daughter and sonny's bastard, more into the Italian mafia and how much it was involved in the vatican and less "Michael has diabetes dontcha know"
 
Forever Fredi said:
I take it you weren't a fan of To The Wonder, Tree of Life, and Knight of Cups? I haven't seen Cups yet. To The Wonder is in my blu-ray collection I have yet to open.
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not really, they look beautiful, but IMO, it's self indulgent naval gazing over pretty pictures. He keeps trying to top Kubrick's 2001, but he doesn't have the storytelling chops to pull it off.
 
bravos4evr said:
The first film is about family as both focus and metaphor tho. The Corleone's as a reflection of organized crime itself. The 2nd film is mostly a "Michael acquired more power and crushes his enemies" film. It's good, don't get me wrong. I do admit to getting a little bored with the Cuba stuff after awhile and I just don't feel the same emotions toward the entire film as i do the first one. I even find that the Fredo thing kinda spits on the central premise of the first film. I don't think Michael would ever have him killed. He would kill Carlo, because he wasn't family. He was an outsider. (like Vito said during the wedding "give him a living, but never discuss the family business with him") The abortion thing seemed a little "cause of the moment" too.

I like part 2, but if I was ranking them out of 100 pts, part one gets 99 and part two gets an 88-90.
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I felt the exact same way, but now I understand and appreciate II more of a masterpiece than I. As I said, at the very worst they're 50-50 in my eyes.
 
I also think it's tougher to make an original film and develop these characters than it is to take existing characters and take them on a new journey.
 
bravos4evr said:
I also think it's tougher to make an original film and develop these characters than it is to take existing characters and take them on a new journey.
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In fairness though, wasn't the Godfather already a book? So it's not like Coppola started from scratch with no source material. I've always wanted a GF4, and Garcia and Pacino were both ready to return, but I believe Puzo didn't finish writing it. Lucas created his characters from scratch for the original Star Wars?
 
Forever Fredi said:
I take it you weren't a fan of To The Wonder, Tree of Life, and Knight of Cups? I haven't seen Cups yet. To The Wonder is in my blu-ray collection I have yet to open.
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I thought Tree of Life was tremendous, but I wouldn't put it up there with Days of Heaven. I need to go ahead and watch To the Wonder while it's on Netflix—but I didn't think Knight of Cups had seen a full release yet?
 
I can't speak to Knight of Cups—and I'll try to expand more on this general claim later, when I have more time—but I strongly believe that a text's being "self-indulgent" does not disqualify it from being good.

In my appraisal, Malick's Tree of Life is both self-indulgent and really effective and affecting. I think it's substantive as well—there's a lot more than "pretty pictures" operating there, even if he is dealing with cinematic narrative in a fundamentally different way than conventional filmic "storytelling". Something like 2001: A Space Odyssey might break with traditional narrative structure in the way, say, Joyce's Ulysses does; the end result is unconventional, prismatic, and wonderful, but still resembles a film with a story (on the one hand) and a novel (on the other). But Tree of Life blows the narrative up even a bit more; it's more like a cinematic poem, leaving all but the barest "story" structures behind in hopes of accessing something appositive, or ideogrammic, untethered from the expository.

I find that an impressive experiment, and I think pretty well carried off in Tree of Life—though, for what it's worth, from the early reviews I've read, Knight of Cups doesn't really progress much from the formal audacity of Tree of Life, instead feeling more of the same, all the sheen but underwhelming on substance. I'm reserving judgment on the latter until I see it, though.
 
jpx7 said:
I can't speak to Knight of Cups—and I'll try to expand more on this general claim later, when I have more time—but I strongly believe that a text's being "self-indulgent" does not disqualify it from being good.

In my appraisal, Malick's Tree of Life is both self-indulgent and really effective and affecting. I think it's substantive as well—there's a lot more than "pretty pictures" operating there, even if he is dealing with cinematic narrative in a fundamentally different way than conventional filmic "storytelling". Something like 2001: A Space Odyssey might break with traditional narrative structure in the way, say, Joyce's Ulysses does; the end result is unconventional, prismatic, and wonderful, but still resembles a film with a story (on the one hand) and a novel (on the other). But Tree of Life blows the narrative up even a bit more; it's more like a cinematic poem, leaving all but the barest "story" structures behind in hopes of accessing something appositive, or ideogrammic, untethered from the expository.

I find that an impressive experiment, and I think pretty well carried off in Tree of Life—though, for what it's worth, from the early reviews I've read, Knight of Cups doesn't really progress much from the formal audacity of Tree of Life, instead feeling more of the same, all the sheen but underwhelming on substance. I'm reserving judgment on the latter until I see it, though.
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this may sound ...dickish, but it may be cinematic poetry, but I find said poems cloying, juvenile and of low quality. His meandering narrative and silly whispering protagonist tropes are tiring. I really don't care for his movies at all anymore.
 
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