Last movie watched...

[Tiplodocus]

There's no justifiable reason for not liking Groundhog Day, though - that's just depraved!

Word. 

I suppose if you don't get by the first twenty minutes where Bill Murray (like many mid to late Eighties and earliy Nineties protaganists) is a complete prick, you might miss out on the joys that follow.

And it's not so much laugh out loud funny (maybe one or two gags) as just builds a brilliant big smile on your face.

Unusually there is redemption (and again, I'm always amazed when rewatching films of that time period, how many of the protaganists remain complete pricks).

[JamesC]

I think Groundhog day is just too much Bill Murray. I like Bill Murray but prefer him in small doses. He's excellent in Ghostbusters because his cynicism is perfectly balanced by Dan Ackroyd's boundless enthusiasm.
I find Andi MacDowall pretty grating too.

The last film I watched was Mama. A pretty ropey horror film which was produced by Del Toro.
The story wasn't bad but it felt like it was padded out to fill the running time. It would've been great as an hour long TV drama.
The monster was pretty good but is revealed too early and then we see too much of it. It's usually the case in these films that 'less is more' when it comes to monster screen time.
There was lots of stuff with moths and bugs that didn't really make sense. I suspect this was Del Toro's influence as he seems to be obsessed with bugs (he made the terrible 'Mimic').   

[TordelBack]

... just too much Bill Murray.

I reject your premise.  There's no such thing, only varying degrees of too little Bill Murray.

[Tiplodocus]

... just too much Bill Murray.

I reject your premise.  There's no such thing, only varying degrees of too little Bill Murray.

Never seen LOST IN TRANSLATION then?  I demand two hous of my life back!

[Theblazeuk]

I would argue Lost in Translation didn't have enough Bill Murray.

I liked Mama's monster. And the little kids were dead creepy. The subplots were a bit all over the place though and it could have done without the mop of hair moving around the room...

[TordelBack]

I would argue Lost in Translation didn't have enough Bill Murray.

Indeed.  Even so, I really enjoyed Lost In Translation.  Although it probably helps that I have an irrational attraction to Ms. Johansson, and she does wear a fine selection of pants in that film.

[paddykafka]

The English Patient.

Watched it with my best friend who had never seen it before. She really liked the film but had to leave the room during the thumb-cutting scene, as she is rather squemish about such things, bless her cotton socks.*
I'm not normally a fan of romantic movies per se, but The English Patient is about so much more: a great story, characters that you can actually care about, some wonderful performances by a superb cast, beautiful cinematography and a lush, moving score by Gabriel Yared. I still weep at the closing scene with Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas.


*(We watched Insidious over Halloween and she spent at least half the movie either shouting in terror or begging me to turn it off. The guys in the flat above me thought that I was torturing her, lol!).

[radiator]

Maybe I should give it another shot but I just remember finding Lost in Translation smug, pretentious and booooooring. Not even Murray could keep me interested.

[pictsy]

Lost in Translation never really interested me.  Although the idea of experiencing Japan through western eyes appeals to me (coincidently I have actually been watching some YouTube videos of a British guy's experiences living in Japan) I don't think that the film is about that and I'd just end up disappointed.

I've never watched The English Patient either and have no plans to.

[Colin Zeal]

I'm not sure any attraction Scarlet Johansson could be described as irrational.

[Theblazeuk]

I watched Lost in Translation on a horribly bad hangover, gripping the couch to stop from hurling at the faintest whiff of anything.

This was an appropriate mood/feeling to watch a bleak, understated movie where life seemed to pass by without anything visceral happening. I needed to feel disconnected from life at that moment it was full of things that made want to spew

[Professor Bear]

The Wolverine, which is one of those films.  Juvenile and ponderous and seemingly made for people ashamed to be watching a superhero film, this is still quite unambiguously one of those thanks to superpowers upon which the plot hangs, supervillains that literally hiss and spit and kill people at random, a plot to steal the hero's powers, and a showdown at the end where the hero fights a bigger version of themselves right out of the Robocop 2 Good Sequel-makin' handbook.  It's not very interesting.

Red Sonja - shit.  I admit I don't know much about the character, but she's supposed to be some kind of warrior maiden who owes nothing to men as far as I can tell, yet here she's not just the student of male warriors - despite there being an order of warrior nuns in the film to which she has close ties - but she has a rape backstory as well, the latter of which has literally nothing at all to contribute to the story beyond compounding some already well-dodgy sexual politics.
If you ignore the direction, the story and the acting - haha oh God the acting! - there's some admirable old-school fantasy trappings in here to enjoy like giant skeleton bridges, lonely skull-shaped temples to forgotten gods sitting in the middle of nowhere and climactic sword battles in crumbling citadels.
Still shit, though.  I wish it wasn't, but it is.

[von Boom]

Red Sonja - shit. 

The mullet didn't give that away?

[pictsy]

Cypher

Really enjoy this film, seen it a number of times now.  I liked the premise and execution.  It is very self contained within its own premise offering us little beyond what we need to follow the story.  It may have been done because it was a budget film - I have no idea about it's production costs, but it lends it an almost claustrophobic quality which gets exemplified near the conclusion.  I thoroughly enjoy it.  A little gem I stumbled upon by accident years ago and glad I did.

For tonights "Film whilst Pictsy does her sketches" I have picked out a choice between Fight Club, Silent Hill or Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.  I have also decided that my sketch for tonight shall be some Kingdom fanart.  Did I imagine seeing that it is returning to 2000AD again?

[SmallBlueThing]

Red Sonja - shit. 

The mullet didn't give that away?

Oddly, I've been reading a lot of Red Sonja comics recently- the Dynamite series, not the Marvel ones (though I will no doubt try them later), and loving them unreservedly. As a result of this, I was reading one in the staff room at some place I was working last week, when one of the male staff decided to talk to me about it. He couldn't understand why I hadn't seen the film (I have really, just it was before he was born, and it was shit and I was making a point). He got very irate that I had no interest in seeing it and would prefer to read the comics instead. He said "it's a load of crap (he should work in advertising really), but you HAVE to see it, because it's got to be better than comics hasn't it?" He also said it "was more important"- as if anything other than arguably the stories Howard wrote are "important".

All I remember was this huge heifer of a woman in a ridiculous wig, and Arn-uld pretending not to be Conan for some reason. I'm sure there's a fascinating reason why they made it and didn't call him Conan, but I can't even be bothered to google it.

SBT