It's strange how a movie many people liked can just elude you. I'm not sure that when I reached the end I even got the point. That it's better to be crazy and impassioned than sane and passive? I guess that's it. I expected the movie to be humorous--it seldom was. It was grim, slow and overly fond of Molly Shannon's face. Truly this obsession with closeups is getting on my nerves, too. Why must everything be pitched at less than three feet? I'd give it a C.What movie, generally well reviewed eluded you? Or what movie generally poorly reviewed did you like? I liked Across the Universe, which was pretty well panned.
Also, I find I am a lot harder on movies I see on DVD. Easier to walk out of the living room than a theater.
22 comments:
I was among the early revilers of the shallow and adorably kute CRASH (written and directed by the hack Paul Haggis, not the fine adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel), but happily it seems that there has since been made manifest a healthily widespread realization of just what a piece of offal this Oscar-winner is. I fail to see what engages audiences in the smug Tobey Maguire in the aggressively stupid SPIDER-MAN films...and I can appreciate clever-stupid. And the current wave of I-sure-won't-get-an-abortion-I'll-be-empowered-by-my-incipient-motherhood-somehow films fails to warm my heart...because we all know how unwanted pregnancies and single teen- or abused motherhood and/or shotgun marriages solve so many more problems than they worsen.
Underappreciated films...hm. It's hard to think of too many films that don't have some sort of impassioned advocates...most more impassioned than their films deserve, I suspect. I think the most unfairly dismissively-reviewed good (not superb, but good) film I've seen this year has been STARDUST. I can also recommend JOURNEYMAN, the science-fantasy tv serial which is going to have it's probable last episode telecast on NBC tonight.
I was hoping to lure you in with a movie review. Crash had a moment or two but on the whole, it didn't hold up well. Too mainulative, whic is why I stayed awawy from Babel. I'll check out Stardust, but too late for Journeyman I guess.
It was the charmless ineptitude of the manipulation that makes CRASH so tooth-grinding...I thought the cast was able to make about two incidents more tolerable than the script deserved, too. I haven't seen too much of BABEL yet, but can see where you might get that impression. (One I've briefly explained my lack of enthusiasm for on Bill Crider's blog is CHILDREN OF MEN, which basically transposes 1973 hippies to the 2040s w/o any sort of update--not time travel, but it might as well be--to stroke the pro-hippie audience, in the course of telling its dumb, flashy tale...made much less dumb than its remarkably stupid PD James source novel, but still very dumb).
The more recent ENCHANTED has been favorably compared to STARDUST...the latter is slightly superior, but both are decent fantasy films (once one is past the intentionally but also actually bad first ten minutes of animation in ENCHANTED).
Saw Enchanted-twice. I thought it was pretty good. She is charming, isn't she?
While I thought the pairing off of the two discarded mates rather mechanical, there were also nice touches in that the new exes show concern for the well-being for the central couple (as opposed to similar characters in supposedly more adult fare), and that the Adams character realizes she should stay in part to help rescue the Dempsey character from his own self-doubt. Returning the favor. Aside from enjoying the new-to-her (and all her fairyland peers) notion of thinking about life and life choices. TM
I also like the rival's ceding of what's best in Pushing Daisies. Is this a new trend?
I Am Legend made me very, very angry. So did Crash. Ditto Love Actually--and really, it should be very, very hard to make me angry when I go in with low, fluffy expectations. I ended up feeling disappointed with No Country for Old Men--I really enjoyed the first three quarters of the movie, but the last bit just kind of made me go "eh."
I agree that Stardust was underrated (though somebody really needs to stop De Niro from attempting comedy). Lust, Caution should rate considerably higher on the Tomatometer.
Oh, I was hoping I Am Legend would be worth seeing. Darn. No Country for Old Men ended and a woman yelled, "Huh" and I have to admit it too. It sometimes happens with stories too. Endings are rarely as satisfying as we want. Too pat and we complain. Too vague not good either.
I really didn't like No Country For Old Men. I think I had too high of expectations because I loved A Simple Plan so much and was expecting it to be more like that. But the on emovie I love that I think has been universally panned is Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl. I love that movie and Ben Affleck' scene with Liv Tyler where they're talking about masturbation is one of the great dialogue scenes in cinema.
Haven't seen JG yet, but if Smith loves to write dialog about anything, it's masturbation.
I think I'm going to be irritable for a while unless NBC or someone picks up some more episodes of JOURNEYMAN...last night's potential finale was as clever and occasionally moving as most of the series, which was widely dismissed at the begiining of the season by dull-witted reviewers. The kind who find every inane doublecross on LOST or SURVIVOR the height of drama.
http://www.nbc.com/Journeyman/video/episodes.shtml
has episodes 107-113 up, and they're worth seeing even if you missed the first six (you're unlikely to stay too lost for long).
I Am Legend is worth seeing up until the last twenty minutes or so. The general buzz seems to think it ended poorly; but the buzzers seem to take the ending more philosophically than I do.
I was fine with the actual ending of No Country for Old Men, just felt sort of deflated by some of the lead-in. Too much screen time for the Mentally Unstable Killer Who Cannot Be Stopped: sometimes less is, in fact, more when it comes to the magic act of characterization.
I agree Jersey Girl was a better movie than it was given credit for. I was disappointed in the context of Kevin Smith's work. I was hoping he was going to stretch himself a bit more.
I'll echo the Journeyman recommendations. It's not the best show evah, but it's solid and deserves stronger praise than "one of the best new shows this season."
Indeed. It's the best of the new shows this season. And I was wrong, or they've just made me wrong...the whole season 101-113 is now up at NBC.com.
(The very good or better new shows this season I've seen:
JOURNEYMAN
LIFE [picked up after so-so pilot]
WIRED SCIENCE [nondramatic ringer]
CALIFORNICATION, on the cusp of the next class: good enough/watchable but flawed new series:
QUARTERLIFE
TELL ME YOU LOVE ME
MAD MEN
CHUCK
BURN NOTICE
possibly REAPER, but I've missed all the episodes so far after the second
PUSHING DAISIES [missed most of these, too, so far]
TORCHWOOD [new to the US, anyway]
and REGENEIS, also new to the US, looks like it could be interesting, if only anyone in Philadelphia would play it.)
BTW, Mike White, THE YEAR OF THE DOG's auteur, is all about discomfort and a kind of off-key pathos. See, or don't, CHUCK AND BUCK for more of same.
Saw Chuck and Buck and I see what he's up to but yeesh, YOTD was just too rarefied.
I like a lot of the same shows. Especially Mad Men, Pushing Daisies and Life. Oh, and Life on Mars. Don't get Showtime and couldn't stick with Tell Me You Love Me. It was like a porno channel we once got in Amsterdam. No fun at all in it.
I can take a bad last twenty minutes of I AM Legend if the rest is as good as it looked on the trailer.
Bryon-I still think you are destined to write something other than crime fiction. You are a romantic at heart.
JOURNEYMAN has a lot of similarities to LIFE ON MARS, only the protag and a few others jump from time to time and back, rather than suffer simply one potentially delusional dislocation. And the word for TELL ME is definitely Dour, but I still was interested, even when the sex scenes were (appropriately, usually) joyless. I guess LIFE ON MARS is new here this year, too, isn't it? I just got BBC America and wasn't real clear on what/how much I'd missed.
This is the second season. You really need to watch the first--and even with that you will not know what's going on with Sam. Is is a coma, time travel, a government plot, etc. Many lovely episodes last year where he meets his parents and himself as a child. I love the way the seventies stuff is subtle. Wait till the US version when they hammer it home in every scene.
I'll have to rent JourneyMan when it comes out on DVD.
Given that Haggis-clone David Kelley will be "adapting" LIFE ON MARS for the US, don't count on it being much. And if you have a good connection speed, a good monitor, and a comfortable chair near your computer, watching the NBC shows online is fairly pleasant (I've caught about half of LIFE and CHUCH that way).
Patti, you noted:
I also like the rival's ceding of what's best in Pushing Daisies. Is this a new trend?
I didn't have the wit to note at the time that both PUSHING DAISIES and ENCHANTED share producer Barry Sonnenfeld, and perhaps other creative input.
I love it. Discarded lovers who want what's best for you. Thanks, Barry.
...one has to wonder what love had to do with it if one doesn't want the best for one's ex...and happy holidays to you and yours, as well, in the unlikely event I don't comment till after the year's end...
You're a generous man. Me, I'd take a hammer to their knees.
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