Cinemateque: The General Movie Thread

[J.]

(pronounced sin-eh-mah-tek, but I felt like being pretentious)

I like movies. I like watching them, discussing them, trading recommendations, irritating other people with my unsolicited opinions and so on. It's the one experience I can share with other people of any background to make myself feel like less of a freak.

So let this be a place for us to share, Fictonians: what have you seen that's worth praising (or warning people away from)? What are you looking forward to?

Before I start, some ground rules:

1. KEEP IT CLEAN. The people who know me well enough understand that this rule is more for my benefit than anyone elses', but this means no personal attacks, no slander, no judgement of another simply because they disagree with you. These are just that -- opinions; and you know that whole saying about opinions and orifices...

2. NO SPOILERS. This one's a bit difficult to enforce. After all, how is one to know that someone else may not have seen a much older movie and ends up having a major plot point mentioned?

I'll look into how to do that invisible text thing where you can highlight hidden blanks to see what people wrote if you absolutely, positively need to say that Bruce Willis has been ______ the whole ______ in The Sixth Sense, but otherwise you should be able to send Personal Messages to each other.

(To be fair, you really should know that in the Empire Strikes Back Darth Vader reveals he's Luke's ______ after chopping his _______ off, and Princess Leia has to watch Han Solo get ______ in ________).

...I admit I posted these Mad Libs examples just to giggle at how dirty they look, but SRSLY YOU GUYS WATCH IT.

With that said -- Inception, anyone?



I go back and forth on director Christopher Nolan's films. For instance, I loved Memento and The Dark Knight, but The Prestige and Batman Begins were underwhelming to me. However, he has become a name that I watch -- especially with him being given the keys to the Superman franchise.

So I'm interested by what looks to be his take on The Matrix. Hey, it's not like the Wachowskis are doing anything with the idea, right? Thinking I'll make a double feature out of this & the new Predators movie at some point -- I need to do the same with Toy Story 3 & the Karate Kid remake as well.

I could easily go on, but I want to give you a chance to contribute. GO

[Ann]

I really want to see Inception. The trailers remind me a bit of Dark City.

[wendybird]

Speaking of being pretentious, I'm slightly obsessed with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And French movies in general, or at least the ones I can get my hands on. XD

I've seen Amelie like 40 times, and I just saw Micmacs recently, and fell in love all over again.


I personally dislike Christopher Nolan. But then I'm very into optimistic storylines and brilliantly colorful movies and sets, and that seems to be the polar opposite of what he's going for. It depresses me.

[Ann]

Wendybird, have you seen the City of Lost Children? It's one of my favorites =)

[wendybird]

I have!
It's in my top 20.

[J.]

I had totally forgotten about Micmacs! I really need to check it out -- I've yet to hear anything negative about it, and Jenuet films have this crazy attention to detail that's always interesting to watch in action.

As long as we're on the topic of directors and attention to detail, I would be remiss if I didn't squee (that is what the kids do these days, yes?) about Edgar Wright. He's behind some of my favorite stuff of the last decade -- Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz -- and now, my most anticipated movie this year:

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.



I was a big fan of the comic this was based on to begin with, but Wright's faithfulness to the series is astounding. When this and The Expendables come out on the same day, I'll just set up a tent in the theater to save time.

[wendybird]

Oh, yes!

My friend convinced me to read the Scott Pilgrim series (I'm not big on graphic novels) and I ended up rather enjoying it!
The movie looks like it's staying crazy faithful to the books, down to the last freckle! And that is always a good thing.

[kikiroll]

I AM SO GOING TO THE MIDNIGHT SHOWING OF INCEPTION!

And the next day is totally going to suck because I will have gotten exactly zero hours of sleep xD (I have insomnia and with how early I have to be at work 3 hrs isn't enough time for my sleepy pills to kick in and wear off so I can get up, thus I'll have to rough it haha) But it will, hopefully, be so worth it!

Movies I've seen recently:

Knight and Day: Cameron Diaz's character made me want to gauge my eyes out with a spoon
Killers: way better than Knight an Day, and for once Ashton Kutcher was actually masculine.....it was odd, I found him...attractive . A fun movie that ends too soon.
Prince of Persia: aesthetically pleasing, a well made (duh just look at the funding) adaptation of the video game. Unfortunately the characters are about two inches deep and the script grates on the ears.
Predators: now, l would just like to state how perplexed I am at the uproar everyone made over Gyllenhaal's "new" body when Adrien Brody managed to go from a toothpick to this:

Anyway. I found this movie to be surprisingly entertaining and pleasantly similar to the original.
Eclipse: wow, twilight movie that doesn't look and sound like a dollar store production or make the viewer want to commit suicide half way through.
Toy Story 3: flippin fantastic! <3 Pixar win's again. And who noticed a certain Ghibli character putting in a guest appearance? Well played Lasseter, well played xD

[J.]

Holy cats, Kiki, you've seen more in the past two months than I have in the year so far! For me it's Book of Eli, The A-Team, Prince of Persia, and Avatar (and I rank them in that order, too).

Though I don't suppose I have any right to turn up my nose at Prince of Persia, because I plan to see the hell out of the new Resident Evil. It's not like the games were ever going to win any awards for storytelling or acting before the movies came out, and Milla Jovovich killing zombies....mmm....

Wait, what were we talking about?

I'm really surprised at your assessment of Killers Vs. Knight & Day -- given the choice I'd instinctively pick Tom Cruise over Ashton Kutcher. Still, you make a valid point about Cameron Diaz.

[J.]

[Note: AHA! Finally figured out what I was doing wrong with the linkage. I IS TEH SMRT]

I am fully prepared for this thread to be me talking to myself about movies ;D

Man, I was looking forward to Sucker Punch on concept alone - Girl, Interrupted + cheesecake + steampunk fantasy hallucinations sounds like an awesome comic / manga / videogame concept! However, actually seeing the characters just makes me feel dirty and brings back painful memories of trying to watch Repo the Genetic Opera.

And this is coming from someone who loved Bayonetta!

I'm going to have to come to terms with the fact that for me, Zack Snyder movies (Dawn of the Dead, 300, Watchmen) make for great visuals and little else.