Land Ho! (2014) - A pair of former brothers-in-law embark on a road trip through Iceland.



I liked this a lot. The brothers-in-law made a great 'Odd Couple'. And Iceland looked stunning of course. (out of five)

[Edited 8/26/14 14:45pm]

American Beauty 4 out 5 stars.

/5

Great movie!!!

Gonna take the kids to see it now!

Sommarlek / Summer Interlude (1951) - While waiting for the night rehearsal of the ballet Swan Lake, the lonely twenty-eight year-old ballerina Marie recalls her first love Henrik.

It's a sad, but beautiful story.

I wanted to watch some Ingmar Bergman summer films before the season was over. I searched the org for when I last posted this one and coincidentally, it was a year ago almost to the day.

Sommaren med Monika / Summer with Monika (1953) - Harry and Monika leave their families and jobs and spend the summer together on an isolated island.

I liked this one more than when I watched it the first time last summer.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Very impressive that the apes had more depth than the humans.

Rage....with nic cage.

i dunno, it was just Mehh,, 5/10

http://www.imdb.com/title...f_=nv_sr_1

Day of Wrath ('Vrenden's Dag' in Danish) 1943

The young wife of an aging priest falls in love with his son amidst the horror of a merciless witch hunt in 17th century Denmark.


This was great. I should watch more criterion selections instead of sampling highly reviewed new releases that always bore the crap out of me. The wife looks eerily like Tatiana Maslany.


½ out of

Internship. 0 stars.

Although I love horror films (not gore) I'll give this high points for special FX but I couldn't watch until the end. I had to just WIKI it and read the ending. 2/5

http://thanatomorphosefilm.com/

"Winters Tale" 7/10

it was ok..i didnt expect to cry so much.

sonic said:

"Winters Tale" 7/10

it was ok..i didnt expect to cry so much.

I've been waiting to see this. Better get the hanky I guess.

Inbetweeners 2 7 / 10

Solid enough.Opening scene very funny.An improvement on the first movie but probably not as funny as the TV series.

We watched "L.A. Confidential" last night. Before I get to my review, I have to review HOW we watched it.

We were at Jemez Springs near Los Alamos, New Mexico. No cell phone, no internet, and about 3 channels on TV. But what natural beauty! However, we don't care about that for this post.

The quaint motor lodge we were staying at had a large quantity of movies we could take back to our room. VHS movies! I bet some of y'all don't even know what VHS is. We took two movies - "Big Trouble in Little China" and "L.A. Confidential".

We settled on "L.A. Confidential" but there was "Big Trouble in Little Jemez" - whoever had "L.A. Confidential" before us was NOT kind and did NOT rewind. At least they only made it halfway through the movie, so I didn't have to rewind the whole thing (although how someone could stop halfway into this movie is a REAL mystery!).

So I rewound it to the beginning. For you young 'uns, and for guys like me that forgot, VHS tapes from the '90's always had about 10 minutes of previews at the beginning. We thought "What the hell? Let's watch them!"

They were all movies that sucked, but it was worth it just for one thing my mother-in-law said. BTW, my mother-in-law is the real-life Lucille Bluth. She's awesome! But not always thinking clearly. Case in point - one of the previews was for a Richard Gere movie called "Red Corner" which was released the same year as "L. A. Confidential" - 1997. My mother-in-law sees the preview - on a VHS tape - and says, "Oh, is that a new Richard Gere movie? I can't wait to go see it".



By the way - did you know Richard Gere's middle name is "Tiffany"? I kid you not! (It was his mom's maiden name.)

So, you ask - how was "L.A. Confidential"?

Awesome! This movie is everything everyone ever said it was! Brilliant movie!

And check this out - it has Lloyd Braun in it! Yes, you heard me right - Lloyd Braun from "Seinfeld"! And not only does it have Lloyd Braun, it also has Jack Bauer's father! Man, what a cast! Oh yeah, there's a couple guys named Spacey and Crowe in it. They're pretty good, too.

And this dude named Guy Pearce. I'm watching him and I'm thinking two things: (1) How many Oscars did he win for this movie; and (2) How come I don't remember him in anything else?

Answers: (1) None, which is a total rip-off; and (2) He's one of those "artists" who only makes movies that "speak to him". This apparently means low-budget Australian movies, which is kind of cool since he lives in Australia.

Anyway, this movie is right up there with "The Usual Suspects". Phenomenal cast, tremendous plot, perfect cinematography, etc. Plus, I just remembered that the guy who played Pierce Padgett (David Straithairn) was also awesome and should have won some Oscars, too.

So even though the Oscars sucked for not giving any Oscars in real-life to this stunning movie, I think this movie should have won about 17 Oscars. Therefore, I rate it 17 Oscars out of a possible 17 Oscars.

My Summer of Love (2004) - In the Yorkshire countryside, working-class tomboy Mona meets the exotic, pampered Tamsin. Over the summer season, the two young women discover they have much to teach one another, and much to explore together.

Watching this a second time, it's much clearer how much of a manipulator Emily Blunt's Tasmin was. The soundtrack by Goldfrapp is nice too. 1/2

sin city 2 3.5/5

if i stay 4/5

The Apple. No sense in rating it. This might be the most ridiculous movies i've watched; the songs are mostly forgettable and one is amazingly tasteless & probably incredibly offensive, but i wasn't bored for one second, and I think overall I kinda loved it.

thekidsgirl said:

I saw Frank last night, and I'd give it 5/5 stars. I laughed, cried, and wanted the soundtrack

that's one i'm really anticipating, mostly because of the jon ronson connection, though I haven't read this particular book yet.

City Lights (1931) - The Tramp struggles to help a blind flower girl he has fallen in love with.

The ending earned an extra half star. 1/2

Sommarnattens leende / Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) - Ingmar Bergman's sexy frolic about the sport of love.

It's a clever romantic comedy.

I haven't watched a WHOLE movie in weeks

Here are some I've seen half of:

Brick (2005)

Couldn't make out much of the dialogue, but I thought it was definitely noir, as set in 90s high school. It didn't engage me.

1/2.5

Cypher (2002)

Might finish watching this one. Low budget sci-fi - everything isn't what it seems. Convoluted plot though. Might not watch it... dunno

1.5/2.5

Oldboy (2013) US remake

DUMB

1/5

I saw half of the original once, but that seemed a bit less dumb.

Crusade

Edge Of Tomorrow 7 / 10

Enjoyable enough. I like Tom Cruise as an actor. It's kinda like Source Code from a few years back. Worth a watch.

[Edited 9/8/14 10:46am]

We watched "Draft Day" last night. I thought it was rather unrealistic.

I won't give away the ending - wait, yeah I will. I have to, or else none of the great analysis below will make any sense. So if for some unknown reason you want to watch "Draft Day", then SPOILER ALERT.

Kevin Costner boiled down the movie's whole problem when he admitted could have just drafted Vonte Mack with the first pick and not gone through all that rigamarole with the trades. But I guess he would have been fired.

In real life, he would have been fired anyway. The owner said, "Make a splash". He really didn't make a splash. No one but the most hard-core football junkies would have cared about, or even understood, how Costner's draft day machinations led to an extra player. And what an extra player - a punt returner! Woot!

And the Seahawks GM would have NEVER traded back the three #1 picks AND the movie version of Devin Hester to draft a guy that was passed on by five teams (including Costner's). He had the next pick, and he knew Costner had already passed on the quarterback Callahan. So he would have called Costner's bluff, and Costner would have folded. And if Costner hadn't folded? The Seahawks would have just picked whomever they were already planning to pick, and kept all those Cleveland draft choices.

There's absolutely NO way Vonte Mack would have called the GM of the Browns, or any other GM. There's NO way everyone would have missed out on the fact that Callahan threw all those touchdowns AFTER the guy that had sacked him four times was ejected from the game. And really - those sacks weren't even Callahan's fault. They were on the offensive line and/or running backs that didn't pick up the blitzes.

And the deal about no team mates going to Callahan's 21st birthday party? C'mon. If the guy was that big of an a-hole, again every GM on the planet would have known it. I thought Puff Diddy was pretty good as his agent, though.

The more I type, the more plot holes I find in this movie. Now for some movies, it's GOOD to let your disbelief be suspended. For instance, even though I have not yet seen "Expendables 3", I am sure that I will happily suspend my disbelief as I watch all my favorite action stars blow shit up.

But for a movie set not in Fantasy Land like "Expendables 3" but in The Real World, it's hard to suspend my disbelief. Or maybe I just know too much about football and/or negotiating to let the unbelievable stuff slide.

The funny thing is, Costner could have pulled off pretty much the same thing at the end, but in an actual believable way. He could have traded with the Bills, got their draft choices so he could draft Vonte Mack, also gotten those two players in the trade, and then traded one or both of those players for someone else's first round pick and drafted Terry Crews's gangster son. In fact, I told my wife, "Watch - I've figured this out" but they didn't do it the way that made real-world sense.

Costner was excellent as usual. The Jennifer Garner character was totally useless. I wanted to throw stuff at the TV whenever Costner's mom was on it. And WTF was up with her two-tone hairdo? Holy moley, that was weird, even for Cleveland.

I wanted to punch Denis Leary in the mouth but I always want to punch him in the mouth. Plus, there is absolutely no way that a real GM would have done a complete 180 on Leary and said, "Hell yeah! You're the guy to coach this team!" after already telling the owner that Leary was nothing more than a lucky babysitter.

I could go on and on (not like I haven't already!) so let's just say that "Draft Day" gets 1.5 Heisman Trophies out of a possible 5 Heismans.

I also watched "Under Seige" and "Under Seige 2".

"Under Seige" is one of the best action movies there is. Steven Seagal, Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones? Get outta here! Loved it.

I didn't realize that Seagal's niece in "Under Seige 2" was a young, brunette Katherine Heigl.

"Under Seige 2" is not nearly as good as the first movie, but I loved the two bad guys. Eric Bogosian was perfect as the computer nerd.

And Everett McGill was AWESOME as Penn. That dude should have been a superstar, IMHO. He was great in "Heartbreak Ridge" and also in "Under Seige 2". What's weird is that he's still very much alive, but hasn't been in anything since 1999. Maybe he won the lottery or something.

Here are the ratings for these two movies:

"Under Seige" - Ten birthdaycake babes out of a possible ten birthdaycake babes. This movie is pretty much perfect.

"Under Seige 2" - Six point five severed Eric Bogosian fingers out of (of course) a possible ten severed Eric Bogosian fingers.