Best Movie: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia HM: The Turin Horse
Best Direction: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia HM: Pedro Almodovar, The Skin I Live In
Best Cinematography: Manuel Alberto Claro, Melancholia HM: Guillaume Schiffman, The Artist
Best Editing: Jean-Marc Vallee, Café de Flore HM: Hayedeh Safiyari, A Separation
Most Creative Script: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist (a well-executed silent film) HM: Assif Kapadia, Senna (a very compelling story using only archival footage)
Best Perfomance (Male): Michael Shannon, Take Shelter HM: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Carnage (2011), directed by Roman Polanski: Two couples meet in a New York apartment to resolve an incident that occurred between their children when one hit the other with a stick. After cobbler, followed later by more coffee, relationships begin noticeably to strain all around. Then the booze arrives and alliances begin to really shift. The play/movie is an occasion for some very funny, often vicious humour and for good acting from all four players, with Christopher Waltz taking the honours. His thinly veiled disdain and sense of inflated self worth allow him to really get under the other characters' skins in a way that is usually very funny. Edward Albee's Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? this ain't, but it's easy to see why the play would appeal to Polanski's often puckish sense of humour. Always good at shooting in confined spaces, he keeps the camera fluid and the zingers moving at a brisk pace in a film that clocks in at just under 80 minutes. Though the movie never escapes its single-set theatrical roots, it is still a lot of sly, nasty fun delivered with a bit of an acidic bite to it by Polanski. A rare bird these days: an unabashedly intelligent comedy.
Didn't wanna let this die in the other thread. I saw this about a week ago and found it to be enjoyable for the most part. I didn't really like the repeated instances of leaving the apartment only to be convinced to go back in thing. And the rapid fire dialogue at the end was far from realistic. However, it was pretty funny and I enjoyed how everyone seemed to team up at various times and attack the others. Some very biting wit and some really good acting (although I couldn't stand Foster in this) but I couldn't shake the feeling that this would make a better play than what I was watching (I know it's a successful play, I haven't seen it though). A decent movie but nothing outstanding.
I'm coming up on deciding my Top 10 movies of the year list for my blog, so tonight I went to see a film I hadn't watched in a few months at the local discount theater, Moneyball. I felt like I wanted it to be as fresh to me as many of the other films I've seen since then. I truly forgot just how much I enjoyed and respected it.
Kihei, you mentioned in your review of Carnage that an unabashedly intelligent comedy is such a rarity. Well, Moneyball is a rarity to me, which is an underdog story about a true event that is completely free of sap. It treats it's audience like an equal, and trusts it will be able to evoke feeling in it's audience using a sharp script, excellent direction, and a strong lead performance.
Well, Moneyball is a rarity to me, which is an underdog story about a true event that is completely free of sap. It treats it's audience like an equal, and trusts it will be able to evoke feeling in it's audience using a sharp script, excellent direction, and a strong lead performance.
From a baseball perspective, there is a lot of errors with it, and as a huge fan of baseball, it ruined the film for me; although, it is still the best baseball movie made.
I felt the moments of 'comedy', if you would like to treat it as such, were placed into the film for the masses to venture their mind away from the potential boring-ness of baseball. Notice how the moments of humor, are not once baseball related? On this direction alone, it is rather forced rather than innately placed within the film.
From a baseball perspective, there is a lot of errors with it, and as a huge fan of baseball, it ruined the film for me; although, it is still the best baseball movie made.
On the issue of the best baseball movie ever made, corny and overwrought and willfully full of beans though it is, I'm going with The Pride of the Yankees(1942), the Lou Gehrig "biography." I just saw it for the first time over the holidays. For all its cheesy tugging at our heart strings, it's got Gary Cooper, all awkward shyness and flat line delivery, doing a terrific job of being the near mythic Gehrig, and his big speech at the end at Yankee Stadium is one of the best moments in '40s Hollywood movies. Plus, Babe Ruth plays himself. Babe ****ing Ruth, I could not believe it. He's good, too--full of gruff good cheer. Kind of a Jack Carson or Oliver Platt turn.
From a baseball perspective, there is a lot of errors with it, and as a huge fan of baseball, it ruined the film for me; although, it is still the best baseball movie made.
I felt the moments of 'comedy', if you would like to treat it as such, were placed into the film for the masses to venture their mind away from the potential boring-ness of baseball. Notice how the moments of humor, are not once baseball related? On this direction alone, it is rather forced rather than innately placed within the film.
I'm a baseball fan as well, especially in the timeframe the movie takes place in. I think they really just picked their spots as to who to focus on. I know a lot of people were upset that Zito, Mulder, and Hudson weren't ever mentioned (you see Hudson on the mound at one point), and they were huge contributers to that team, but they focused on the players that best exemplified the strategy that was brought to the team.
It's not a perfect movie, but it's an exciting and touching story made with an expert hand, and one of my favorites of the year.
I'm a baseball fan as well, especially in the timeframe the movie takes place in. I think they really just picked their spots as to who to focus on. I know a lot of people were upset that Zito, Mulder, and Hudson weren't ever mentioned (you see Hudson on the mound at one point), and they were huge contributers to that team, but they focused on the players that best exemplified the strategy that was brought to the team.
It's not a perfect movie, but it's an exciting and touching story made with an expert hand, and one of my favorites of the year.
I just couldn't get over the lack of mention of those pitchers as well as Tejada and Chavez. The movie made it seem like Hatteberg was the key player on that team.
I also think the movie made Billy Beane seem too witty. His character was more of an emotional motivator at times rather than a scientist.
On the issue of the best baseball movie ever made, corny and overwrought and willfully full of beans though it is, I'm going with The Pride of the Yankees(1942), the Lou Gehrig "biography." I just saw it for the first time over the holidays. For all its cheesy tugging at our heart strings, it's got Gary Cooper, all awkward shyness and flat line delivery, doing a terrific job of being the near mythic Gehrig, and his big speech at the end at Yankee Stadium is one of the best moments in '40s Hollywood movies. Plus, Babe Ruth plays himself. Babe ****ing Ruth, I could not believe it. He's good, too--full of gruff good cheer. Kind of a Jack Carson or Oliver Platt turn.
Hmm. I'll have to check that one out, I had never heard of it till now actually.
Not a fan of the Yankees, but I do love baseball history and appreciate baseball legends.
Cheers!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu Macher
I'm a baseball fan as well, especially in the timeframe the movie takes place in. I think they really just picked their spots as to who to focus on. I know a lot of people were upset that Zito, Mulder, and Hudson weren't ever mentioned (you see Hudson on the mound at one point), and they were huge contributers to that team, but they focused on the players that best exemplified the strategy that was brought to the team.
My biggest complaint was a lot of the players they did acquire were acquired for a particular reason, not necessarily the genius of Beane. David Justice, as an example. He knew that the Yankees were paying his salary, it didn't take Beane to knock some sense into him, like the movie shows. Hatteberg, another example, actually won the starting job with his play not the managers reluctance to play him. Additionally, Carlos Pena was not a top baseball player. He was actually very poor at the time.
Probably the biggest error was the fact that Jeremy Giambi was already on the A's in 2002. He wasn't acquired. If you can remember exactly, he was the one who never slid with the famous Jeter tag at home plate.
Lastly, Beane was never ever in trouble with his job. He was never going to get fired.
---Picked up War Horse and found it extremely disappointing, as in what a total waste of talent. That it is well made in addition to being hackneyed, bland, stale, and dull only makes it more depressing
Moneyball (the book) is fascinating and exciting, but I think it's just a classic case of a story that plays out better on the page than on the screen. The book had the built-in cinematic narrative with the winning streak, but in the movie it felt too shoe-horned in. Almost like they made the movie about the stats side of things, and then said "wait a second, this is a sports movie! We need to throw an underdog/impossible odds story in here!". Not to mention the thread about Beane's daughter, which is pure and plainly Hollywood.
Hugo: 8.5/10
This is actually a surprisingly wonderful animal, and a true rarity seemingly outside of Pixar movies - it's witty, charming, both heart-warming and sad, and it can be enjoyed and appreciated on multiple levels, young or old. And it has some of the cleanest and best-looking 3D animation I've ever seen, a big plus. In the end the many themes, of loneliness and trying to find one's place in the world and friendship and the magic of cinema and understanding across generational divides...it might sound cliché when I write it but they're all handled so deftly and with genuine emotion by Scorsese, it's impossible to not be moved.
My only real complaints was that the movie takes a while to really get going, and I wished there was more laugh-out-loud humor - there's some cuteness and some stuff that'll make you smile, but not much genuinely funny as in a Pixar movie. That would have really put Hugo over the top, for me.
The Flowers of War (2011), directed by Zhang Yimou: During the Siege of Nanking's atrocities in 1937, an American mortician (Christian Bale, go figure) finds himself masquerading as a priest and trying, initially against his will, to protect two very different groups of females, a collection of hookers and a group of school girls, hiding from the marauding Japanese in a ramshackle church. Reading that sentence over, it sounds like a really interesting movie. It isn’t. Yimou, who has a world-class visual sense (Hero; House of Flying Daggers; Curse of the Golden Flower) but a tendency to excess in lesser works, treats the material as an excuse for schlock melodrama and conventional Hollywood fakery. As a result, the film not only doesn’t come close to realizing its potential, it seems frivolous, even embarrassing, given its tragic setting. This movie appears especially superficial when compared with the powerful and moving City of Life and Death (2009), a film that painstakingly bears witness to the human costs involved in the **** of Nanking. So, at least on these shores, a very poor year for Asian film ends with a whimper.
Nobody Knows (2004) By Hirokazu Kore-eda - 4.5
Really touching. But how could nobody have noticed? It seemed like the people surrounding them would have had to go out of their way to ignore it.
Last edited by Shareefruck: 01-04-2012 at 05:16 PM.
Six Feet Under: Seasons 1 and 2 - 5
What a well-rounded show. Funny, dramatic, addictive, and poignant at the same time.
Are we allowed to post about TV series as well? I haven't watched a movie in months because I've been watching Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Sopranos and Sons of Anarchy.
Are we allowed to post about TV series as well? I haven't watched a movie in months because I've been watching Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Sopranos and Sons of Anarchy.
Allowed? We're probably not technically supposed to, but I don't see why anyone would bother having a problem with it. They're pretty close mediums, and I'd hate to constantly bump an otherwise dead thread, if one even exists.
I would just go for it until someone complains.
Last edited by Shareefruck: 01-04-2012 at 05:23 PM.
Watched it with low expectations but was pleasantly surprised. Marks off for James Franco's cheesy acting and the CGI was pretty bad at certain points. I loved the development of Caeser's character
Allowed? We're probably not technically supposed to, but I don't see why anyone would bother having a problem with it. They're pretty close mediums, and if there's a thread for it, I'd hate to constantly bump an otherwise dead thread.
I would just go for it until someone complains.
I was just wondering since sometimes people on HFBoards are really strict about what you can post (not most of the time). This doesn't seem to be one of those threads.
