[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

I guess it was so loud that you didn't notice the majority of it was also swapped out with Berlin Foot Chase from the previous movie!

I saw this on Friday and nearly lost my lunch a dozen times. It's the best looking 3D movie I've seen but it's very disorentating and I felt ill during and after the film was done!

Superb special effects. The script was secondary, which was obvious. And like you said Steven Price's score was effective but unmemorable.

-Erik-

it was his first role, and apparently director Greengrass didn't let the 2 main leads meet before they actually met on screen. Because he was very nervous to actually star alongside Tom Hanks. Either way, I heard great things about the film, especially Abdi's performance.

Will rent it once it's available on blu-ray

No, it's a manipulative technique. When you start out with the most tense stuff, you don't really get to like the other actor, which means that the tension is more genuine.

A similar thing happened on Saving Private Ryan. The Tom Hanks team went through a week-long boot camp, which was very difficult physically and mentally for the actors. Matt Damon didn't, so there was an element of genuine dislike to Damon on the set, which showed in the performances as well.

All right. So now I have seen. Man of Steel.

Since it is well known in these parts that I enjoy films like the SW Prequels and "Prometheus", it won't be any surprise that I loved every single minute of the Superman reboot.

Brilliant film.
Great score.

Maybe my poor taste is to blame.
Maybe it's due to the fact that I don't dwell in my childhood.

Whatever, two hours very well spent. Looks like Thor and I belong to an exclusive club here.

But to each his own.

Volker

Well, as opposed to the mega-brilliant Donner film?

Volker

Didn't like half those movies come out last year, Franz?

Of those, I've seen exactly none and the only one I have any interest in seeing is Gravity. So my contribution to this discussion ends here.

Franz, you clearly enjoy the more artsy films. Have you seen , MUD? I thought that was pretty good. GRAVITY is the only one from your list that I've seen, other than MAN OF STEEL, which I thought was okay, though it was no fun and Supes now apparently doesn't care about collateral damage unless Lois lane is in trouble (did he save anyone else in the film?) I thought the score for MOS was not good. If you score every scene as though it is the epic thing to every grace the silver screen, then none of it ends up feeling epic. I liked the scenes on Krypton a lot, but then the score stayed at that level for the rest of the film, with hardly a quiet moment.

I have really liked some of the big summer movies from this year. IRON MAN 3, STAR TREK I.D. (I know this one upset a lot of the the Trek faithful, but I really liked it despite "the scene") and WORLD WAR Z all come to mind and films I quite enjoyed. GRAVITY is, however, by far the best thing I've seen this year.

Forgive me, I'm always a little bit anal about such things...


Ah, I see. So it's more films you saw in 2013 than films that came out in 2013. I guess I should have known. Release dates can indeed be an annoyance, considering I have to wait until November 8th or something to see Gravity here in the UK.

As to the others, well, my taste in film (and, indeed, their music) still tends more towards the blockbuster than the arthouse. But that's not to say that I won't ever see the films in your list, just that they weren't ones that had me dashing off to the cinema to see. I certainly mean to see The Great Gatsby one of these days, if nothing else (but Baz Luhrman's grating extravagance isn't something I needed to shell out the ticket price for, now or ever ).

That CD is sitting on my shelf waiting for its time.

V.

I guess I'm closer to Mark than Martijn here on GATSBY. (Particularly when I throw in the barb that I tried to get into BOARDWALK EMPIRE recently, but the filmmaking bored me.) The last significant 20s American-set film I liked a lot was PUBLIC ENEMIES, pretty much the opposite extreme of GATSBY in film style, controversial for its flagrant use of digital cameras in a period cineastes have come to associate with whatever Brian DePalma or Howard Hawks thought it should look like on film. Just like Michael Mann should be free to bust a convention or two in how that period looks, Baz Luhrman is going to the go the other way and treat it with the freedom of tone fiction allows. So it held no surprises for me that it was the thing it was, and if the grace of Fitzgerald isn't there (Luhrman is far too emphatic and extroverted for that), maybe I don't need every film to be the definitive version its marketing team want me to believe it will be. Like plays, these things are done again and again, perhaps less frequently due to the capital expenditure, and there'll be another one, perhaps treated with the solemn gravity of Todd Field.

I'm glad Luhrman got the chance though. I'm pretty suspicious of him, and when the material is not there, his images-as-design-playdough approach collapses. (See Australia.) Fortunately his formalist inclinations peak early, and the film becomes more classical after Gatsby's love becomes clear. Also, his whimsy is matched to a worthy tale. (This probably worked in Joe Wright's favour with Anna Karenina also -- his team can go nuts with it because the foundation is so sturdy and well-known. All those other raving stylists - Zack Snyder, Michael Bay, et al - should take notes.)

I will say this, were it not for DiCaprio, I don't think the film would work at all, but it wouldn't be the first film where the main character was a particularly critical piece of the puzzle. Daisy worketh not quite so well.

The other thing I liked a great deal however was the music. The melody from Yared's Cold Mountain is a bit distracting, and there's a touch of Benjamin Button in the score at moments, but I just found the ever shifting medley of idioms, voices and musical styles a joy in the cinema. And in the end, all these diffuse musical pieces amount to a leitmotif approach, much closer to Max Steiner than Scorsese's needledrop compilations. That so rarely happens in films these days, and the film's style and tone could not be more ripe for it. Perhaps it's excusable that the film score afficianados no longer recognise it when it comes.

Thor: The Dark World

Surprisingly good. It certainly doesn't top The Avengers (what would?) but it's about in line with the excellent Iron Man 3. It even has Chris O'Dowd and Thor riding the London Underground. Marvel's Phase 2 is shaping up nicely.

Thor out of five


*getting coat*

hmph, shit, cgi Yoda is.


Kind of half watching Star Wars Ep 3, it's great when Ian McDiarmid is on screen.