Movies

[JoeLassister]

Saw Cloverfield today. Surprisingly, I had a really nice time watching it. Usely, I don't like sci-fi movies that much. But I like the style of Cloverfield, the shoulder camera thing.

Aside The Blair Witch Project, what else can I see of good shoulder camera movies ???

[Fanpuck33]

Saw Cloverfield today. Surprisingly, I had a really nice time watching it. Usely, I don't like sci-fi movies that much. But I like the style of Cloverfield, the shoulder camera thing.

It was a really cool movie up until the end, which totally sucked.

[goalerexpert86]

Very good. It's not hard to see the similarities between this and TWBB (PT Anderson watched this movie over and over again while filming his movie). I wouldn't call it one of my favourite movies but an interesting story - or I should say the story itself is nothing extraordinary but the characters and themes make it interesting. Dobbs slowly gets crazier, greedier and more paranoid and the ideas and morals are so accessible and easy to see. You don't have to analyze it for hours to understand what John Huston wanted to say.

I saw A Fish Called Wanda, a John Cleese movie. A bit more serious than you'd think, I liked it and would watch it again but it is neither a classic nor one of the best works of Monty Python so I wouldn't really recommend it to people.

And finally, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The structure reminded me very much of It's A Wonderful Life but I didn't like this as much, probably because it's based on a political story and politics mostly bore me. I was expecting more from this but it's still worth watching, especially for the ending. And of course, Jimmy Stewart's one of my favourite actors so I like to see anything by him.

(I'm gonna start putting titles in italics the way you do, it comes out much better that way.)

Great Movie in my opinion!!

[JoeLassister]

It was a really cool movie up until the end, which totally sucked.

The thing who sucks the most is

that the helicopter pilot is not flying away from the monster.

. That makes no sense. If this is what you mean by "the end", i agree. But i thought the very end is right on. I would have hate a different ending.

[Fanpuck33]

The thing who sucks the most is

that the helicopter pilot is not flying away from the monster.

. That makes no sense. If this is what you mean by "the end", i agree. But i thought the very end is right on. I would have hate a different ending.

What I meant is that

there was no ending. We find nothing out about what the monster was or where it came from. Hell, we don't even find out if the bomb killed the monster. It was just like the show Lost. It kept building and building and ended up leaving more questions and answering none.

[lazy26]

Just saw an old but very good film : Total Recall

***ed up story that grabs your interest and lot of very good action scenes. I was captivated from beggining to end. Now thats an action movie!

Funnyly too, I got this only because it was on a double feature disc with Terminator 2, and I liked this one better than T2 haha.

Oh man, I loved that movie as a teenager. I must have seen it 20 times.

[JoeLassister]

What I meant is that

there was no ending. We find nothing out about what the monster was or where it came from. Hell, we don't even find out if the bomb killed the monster. It was just like the show Lost. It kept building and building and ended up leaving more questions and answering none.

Ok. But that is what I like.

Don't forget that the movie in itself isn't a story telled by a narrator or even a story we see from A to Z. The whole movie is an amateur videotape. We don't know nothing else than what the guy and his camera knows.

It is very different from both of us because I was hoping in the last 10 minutes

that no kind of explaination would happen at the very end (breaking news, scientific report,etc. I think the major aspect of the movie, which I liked, is the fear of the unknown, and an ending like you propose would have scraped my "fear" of the unknown.

[BTH]

How Green Was My Valley is great. The atmosphere feels so real and you can sense al the emotions floating around the room. The respect they have for their father and the love they have for eachother is clear.

American Gangster is pretty mediocre. It has nothing that you can't find in a dozen other movies just like it. That's pretty much all there is to say.

[jetsniper]

We find nothing out about what the monster was or where it came from.[/b] Hell, we don't even find out if the bomb killed the monster

You kind've do, actually. Like his other project Lost (and now Fringe), Abrams used heavy viral marketing for Cloverfield. Using the information given out at a variety of fake websites made for the movie, you can piece them all together to form your answer. He also finally managed to give a purpose to Slush-O which he even included in Alias. I just did a quick search on google and found one poster who managed to tidily sum all the info together. This is his post, I'd wrap it in quote tags but then it seems to eliminate the spoiler tags. So here you go:

"The cloverfield monster is very complex. Ill describe it as much as i can.. here ya go:

OK so supposedly like 2billion years ago There was a passive organism and a aggressive organism, and they both got stuck at the bottom of the ocean. They passive one froze, while the aggressive organism continued to evolve. Then somewhat 2 billion years later, A like.. doctor or somthing found the passive organism, and deiscovered that when people ate it, they felt good! So they made a smoothie containing the passive organism, the smoothie was called like: Slush-o or somthing [theyres even a website for it] and it was a hit in japan. SO they sold it to America, and everywhere else, and so it became a hit there too, because it makes you feel good. What they didnt know what that the food sourse of the agressive organism was the passive organism, And so almost like everyone had the passive organism flowing through they're blood stream. And the agressive organism came up from the ocean, and needed to eat. So when it saw all the passive organisms: everywhere... da da da: Cloverfield. So yea. Thats the cloverfield monster for you.. haha. [the agressive organism is the monster]"

[Fanpuck33]

We got into this a little last time someone brought up Cloverfield, and I still think that viral stuff is stupid. You shouldn't have to spend time hunting all around the web and other TV shows to learn about a show or movie.

[JoeLassister]

We got into this a little last time someone brought up Cloverfield, and I still think that viral stuff is stupid. You shouldn't have to spend time hunting all around the web and other TV shows to learn about a show or movie.

true. But I think it's not necessary to do so to appreciate Cloverfield.

[jetsniper]

We got into this a little last time someone brought up Cloverfield, and I still think that viral stuff is stupid. You shouldn't have to spend time hunting all around the web and other TV shows to learn about a show or movie.

You can think it's stupid or whatever but it's still part of the canon and thusly still matters. It allows the creators to add another element to their idea while giving fans a little more enjoyment at the same time.

Honestly, if you really cared that much about the monster or something about Lost or whatever, you'd put the time into it. I literally took 5 seconds using google to find out about Cloverfield. But I also spent months with my friend playing the Lost game and had a lot of fun doing it. It's not there to offer necessary information but as a reward to the fans who care enough to piece it all together.

[Fanpuck33]

You can think it's stupid or whatever but it's still part of the canon and thusly still matters. It allows the creators to add another element to their idea while giving fans a little more enjoyment at the same time.

Honestly, if you really cared that much about the monster or something about Lost or whatever, you'd put the time into it. I literally took 5 seconds using google to find out about Cloverfield. But I also spent months with my friend playing the Lost game and had a lot of fun doing it. It's not there to offer necessary information but as a reward to the fans who care enough to piece it all together.

I do care, I just never knew about any of it. I only knew about the movie Cloverfield, nothing else. I know about the show Lost, nothing about a game or anything. I mean, after watching a movie, why should I be expected to know to search the internet for the answers I want? Why on earth would I assume that there would be a background story floating around the internet? Movies are supposed to tell a story, not make you go home with homework.

Is this whole viral marketing thing just a way to get people to watch commercials or something? I mean, when a show goes on commercial, I change the channel to watch something worthwhile for a few minutes, like a game. I just think it's ridiculous for things outside a show or movie to be considered canon, unless a show has ended and they continue it in books or something.

[jetsniper]

It's not there to offer necessary information but as a reward to the fans who care enough to piece it all together.

Yes, it's still canon but I like I said, it's not important information. You're not going to miss out on anything by not checking it out. It's for hardcore fans who want to take it to another level.

Man, it's almost like you're offended by the concept. It's not a big deal.

Edited September 14, 2008 by jetsniper

[JoeLassister]

Yes, it's still canon but I like I said, it's not important information. You're not going to miss out on anything by not checking it out. It's for hardcore fans who want to take it to another level.

Man, it's almost like you're offended by the concept. It's not a big deal.

He wanted to know about the monster, but there is just no point to know about it since nobody knows about it in the movie.

[jetsniper]

He wanted to know about the monster, but there is just no point to know about it since nobody knows about it in the movie.

Yeah, I know that but we were discussing the point of viral marketing. Where the monster comes from just happens to be part of that.

[JoeLassister]

Yeah, I know that but we were discussing the point of viral marketing. Where the monster comes from just happens to be part of that.

I'm not a fan of a marketing addition to a piece of art.

[BTH]

I discovered the free movie library at Dawson and they have virtually everything! I have a 6 hour break every Tuesday so I'm guaranteed a good movie per week at least.

Anyway, today, I tried it for the first time with Fritz Lang's M (1931, B&W, subtitles). This is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life - absolutely incredible. Has anyone else here seen it?

Edit: Oh! I've also seen The Maltese Falcon in my Film Styles class. A definite classic but I wouldn't rank it up with the best noirs I've seen, e.g. Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. I would have to say that this is he most impressive Bogart performance I've seen - solid stuff.

Edited September 16, 2008 by BTH

[Doktor Kosmos]

I saw High Fidelity today. I was unimpressed. I don't see what all the fuzz was about.

[BTH]

Lately I've seen Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin, Dziga Vertov's Man With The Movie Camera, Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, Alfred Hitchcock's The Farmer's Wife, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and then a few short films by DW Griffith (Nursing A Viper, The Adventures of Dollie) and Charlie Chaplin (Easy Street, The Vagabond, The Cure).

Rashomon is a good movie with masterful cinematography that makes it great. I consider Kurosawa, Bergman and Kubrick the three legitimate contenders for the Best Director of All Time title (my choice would be Kubrick but I've also seen way more of his work).

The Third Man is pretty sick. There are a couple of awesome uses of the set near the beginning of the movie that I loved. One was when Martins walks out one door ad then walks back in through the other one to answer a question ("Sounds exciting." "It is."). The other was when he got punched and swung around the post, falling on to the bench. Orson Welles is unbelievable, as is the closing shot.

The Battleship Potemkin is one of the most influential films in movie history. Eisenstein introduces his style of montage editing to the world and it's now impossible to watch a movie without seeing some of Eisenstein's influence. This is my favourite silent film I've seen so far.

The Man With The Movie Camera is more an experiment than the actual movie but I would recommend that anyone go on youtube and watch the first section of it just to see what it's all about - once you've seen one section, you've pretty much seen it all. There is no plot whatsoever it is just a man taking footage of random events and sticking them together. Combine it with a score that was recently redone and you'll find that it's surprisingly entertaining to watch. I stuck around for the entire thing but like I said, all you need to see is a couple of minutes to get the idea. What impressed me most about this is that many of the shots in this 1929 movie would be considered great even by today's standards.

A Beautiful Mind felt cheap to me. Some parts almost seemed comical, I wasn't able to buy it as a serious movie and Jennifer Connelly was really the only thing that kept me into it. I could support Russell Crowe as Best Actor, but not the movie itself as Best Picture.

The Farmer's Wife - This is a silent Hitchcock in my box set and it went 20 minutes over the running time that it said on the box. All I can really say is that I was incredibly bored and was just waiting for it to end.

Unforgiven - I'm often let down when I see Westerns because I'm expecting a lot of shootouts and action, especially when Clint Eastwood's involved. It turned out to be a good movie just a bit slower than I would have liked.

The Griffith shorts are 12 minutes each and very ordinary. Dollie is actually the first movie he ever made and Viper was done the following year so this was before he really hit his stride.

The Chaplin shorts are good. I especially loved Easy Street, it's my favourite thing I've seen of him. The other two (and I feel like there's another one I'm forgetting) were good but usually had only one or two jokes that made me laugh. Easy Street is the only thing I've seen of him that entertained me throughout the whole thing even if the running time is only 19 minutes.

[Doktor Kosmos]

Lately I've seen Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, Carol Reed's The Third Man, Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin, Dziga Vertov's Man With The Movie Camera, Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, Alfred Hitchcock's The Farmer's Wife, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and then a few short films by DW Griffith (Nursing A Viper, The Adventures of Dollie) and Charlie Chaplin (Easy Street, The Vagabond, The Cure).

Rashomon is a good movie with masterful cinematography that makes it great. I consider Kurosawa, Bergman and Kubrick the three legitimate contenders for the Best Director of All Time title (my choice would be Kubrick but I've also seen way more of his work).

The Third Man is pretty sick. There are a couple of awesome uses of the set near the beginning of the movie that I loved. One was when Martins walks out one door ad then walks back in through the other one to answer a question ("Sounds exciting." "It is."). The other was when he got punched and swung around the post, falling on to the bench. Orson Welles is unbelievable, as is the closing shot.

The Battleship Potemkin is one of the most influential films in movie history. Eisenstein introduces his style of montage editing to the world and it's now impossible to watch a movie without seeing some of Eisenstein's influence. This is my favourite silent film I've seen so far.

The Man With The Movie Camera is more an experiment than the actual movie but I would recommend that anyone go on youtube and watch the first section of it just to see what it's all about - once you've seen one section, you've pretty much seen it all. There is no plot whatsoever it is just a man taking footage of random events and sticking them together. Combine it with a score that was recently redone and you'll find that it's surprisingly entertaining to watch. I stuck around for the entire thing but like I said, all you need to see is a couple of minutes to get the idea. What impressed me most about this is that many of the shots in this 1929 movie would be considered great even by today's standards.

A Beautiful Mind felt cheap to me. Some parts almost seemed comical, I wasn't able to buy it as a serious movie and Jennifer Connelly was really the only thing that kept me into it. I could support Russell Crowe as Best Actor, but not the movie itself as Best Picture.

The Farmer's Wife - This is a silent Hitchcock in my box set and it went 20 minutes over the running time that it said on the box. All I can really say is that I was incredibly bored and was just waiting for it to end.

Unforgiven - I'm often let down when I see Westerns because I'm expecting a lot of shootouts and action, especially when Clint Eastwood's involved. It turned out to be a good movie just a bit slower than I would have liked.

The Griffith shorts are 12 minutes each and very ordinary. Dollie is actually the first movie he ever made and Viper was done the following year so this was before he really hit his stride.

The Chaplin shorts are good. I especially loved Easy Street, it's my favourite thing I've seen of him. The other two (and I feel like there's another one I'm forgetting) were good but usually had only one or two jokes that made me laugh. Easy Street is the only thing I've seen of him that entertained me throughout the whole thing even if the running time is only 19 minutes.

I haven't seen all of those, but the ones I have seen are truly the best the movie industry has yet to produce. I especially love Kurosawa and The Third Man. Haven't seen The Battleship Potemkin but I would love to see it. I envy you!

[Habitforming]

What I meant is that

there was no ending. We find nothing out about what the monster was or where it came from. Hell, we don't even find out if the bomb killed the monster. It was just like the show Lost. It kept building and building and ended up leaving more questions and answering none.

It wasn't a movie though....

It was one account of the nights events as filmed by a group of survivors.

It said it right at the start "this tape was found blah blah blah" what did you expect a new reel about how it was defeated or something?

Edited September 24, 2008 by Habitforming

[BTH]

I haven't seen all of those, but the ones I have seen are truly the best the movie industry has yet to produce. I especially love Kurosawa and The Third Man. Haven't seen The Battleship Potemkin but I would love to see it. I envy you!

Yeah, well I'm in Cinema and Communications so we watched some of The Battleship Potemkin in class and I really liked it so I watched the rest online when I got home. We also watched a little bit of DW Griffith's Broken Blossoms which looks amazing so I'm going to try watching that ASAP.

I've now seen The Kid and I liked that but I still prefer the quick-paced, European style of silents more than the American ones.

[Fanpuck33]

It wasn't a movie though....

It was one account of the nights events as filmed by a group of survivors.

It said it right at the start "this tape was found blah blah blah" what did you expect a new reel about how it was defeated or something?

Hmm, it was film played by a projector at theatres nationwide. That's not a movie?

It would have been pretty easy to gain a little closure within the plot. Instead of all of them going to save the girl, they could have split up. The guy with the camera staying with the military and staying in touch with the others via cell phone. (Or did cell phones stop working? I forget.) You hear what's going on with them and find out what the military is doing. The friend gets rescued and watches as his friends get nuked, along with the beast. Only thing that changes is the video is turned over to the Pentagon rather than being found.

[Habitforming]

Hmm, it was film played by a projector at theatres nationwide. That's not a movie?

It would have been pretty easy to gain a little closure within the plot. Instead of all of them going to save the girl, they could have split up. The guy with the camera staying with the military and staying in touch with the others via cell phone. (Or did cell phones stop working? I forget.) You hear what's going on with them and find out what the military is doing. The friend gets rescued and watches as his friends get nuked, along with the beast. Only thing that changes is the video is turned over to the Pentagon rather than being found.

I didn't mean it wasn't a real movie.... I meant the way it was intended was to tell the story of the main characters and not be a traditional film with a plot and finish to the story.

yes, they could have done as you suggested, but I liked the idea of a make your own conclusion type story.