New Years Eve we watched The Other Woman, with Cameron Diaz and Kate Upton. Good for what it was...T&A. Cameron looked amazing in it, as did Nicki Minaj, who played her secretary.

New Years Day we watched Lone Survivor. Marky Mark is a great actor folks. So much gunfire, so few hits. Do the Taliban have unlimited amounts of ammo? Decent for what it was, an action film.

I want to see "Big Eyes" this weekend, is it any good? Anyone?

out of

A really interesting, realistic and intense , yet also lighthearted and very watchable film about addictions,mainly sex addiction and drug and alcohol abuse, and their impact on people´s lives.

Mark Ruffalo did a great job, so did Tom Robbins whom I barely recognized, and I even liked Pink in it a lot.

I expected it to be more of a romantic comedy flic but it is much more profound than that, yet also not too heavy to watch on a rainy day.

Highly recommended.

nymphomaniac 1 and 2 (edited)

i have a love/hate relationship with lars von trier's films... while there were some aspects of this that were well done, overall it didn't grab me

i think lars kinda jumped the shark for me a while ago

2.5/5

RodeoSchro said:

Ace said:

I believe that Pamela Springsteen was going out with Penn at the time. And doesn't Judge Reinhold sport a Bruce tee in one of the scenes?

Not sure about the t-shirt. He had a "Springsteen - The River" bumper sticker on The Cruising Missile, though!

EDIT: Yo're right! He's wearing a Springsteen t-shirt when he's working at the convenience store, at the end of the movie. Nice catch!

.

[Edited 12/30/14 15:43pm]

RodeoSchro said:

We watched "The Wolf of Wall Street" last night. It was great, or should I say "It was f$%@ing great!"

I give it 6,320 F-bombs out of 6,500 F-bombs.

The Apartment (1960) - A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

This is a great film to watch on New Year's Eve.

Casablanca.

I think I'm supposed to give it 5 stars, but I'm going to give it 4 and 1/2 stars. Take that Casablanca!!! I feel that the script is good, I just think it could have expanded a bit more on some of the secondary characters. Acting is great for the time period. ATGB song is a classic for a reason.

The Trip to Italy – It’s just like the first one: two clever men trying to outperform each other. I hope they keep making these films for a long time. 4/5

luvsexy4all said:

Shawy89 said:

These are the films that impressed me the most this year, which is awfully the worst year in film this current decade:

Only Lovers Left Alive
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ida
Boyhood
Gone Girl
Under The Skin
Winter Sleep
Maps to the Stars
Foxcatcher
Two Days, One Night

I still have to see Birdman, Whiplash and Inherent Vice. I also haven't seen Interstellar yet. I'll have to wait for the Blu-Ray release :/.

this is a stretch...not even this many were good this year

I think these are all the 2014 movies I've seen. A couple of them are perhaps questionable as true 2014 releases, though. Field in England, for example, definitely was released in Europe in 2013, but didn't get a NA released until this year, so I'm counting that as a 2014 film for my purposes.

.

Maybe I'm a soft touch and a little too easy to please, but I liked every single one of them (perhaps a stretch to say i liked noah, but i found it so nutty that i couldn't help but cheer for it a little), and I would rate at least four of them (bolded) as truly great. I also have a few holes to plug, of course - boyhood, inherent vice & whiplash are the big ones i haven't seen.

.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Interstellar

We are the Best

Frank

The Lego Movie

Noah

Edge of Tomorrow

The One I Love

A Field in England

Gone Girl

Coherence

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Guardians of the Galaxy

X-Men Days of Future Past

The Babadook

Cheap Thrills

Blue Ruin

Under the Skin

The Trip to Italy

Snowpiercer

Locke

[Edited 1/5/15 2:49am]

damosuzuki said:

The Trip to Italy – It’s just like the first one: two clever men trying to outperform each other. I hope they keep making these films for a long time. 4/5

I want to see these, damo! The trailers are hilarious!

Hævnen

Danish movie from 2010. Had this been an american film, it would have been something way more devastating and shocking, but it was understated in many parts. Some poignant subplots and really sweet kids.

3.5/5

Some I've watched in the last couple of days

Foxcatcher 3.5/10 (I'll qualify this. It's well put together in general with a quality feel to it, and well acted, but one of the least enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. Couldn't wait for it to end)

St. Vincent 7.5/10

Pride 9/10

Nightcrawler 7.5/10

Fauxie said:

Foxcatcher 3.5/10 (I'll qualify this. It's well put together in general with a quality feel to it, and well acted, but one of the least enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. Couldn't wait for it to end)

Bennett Miller is an awesome director, but this just doesn't appeal to me. Looks super-depressing.

Empress said:

Watched the Equalizer with Denzel. It was pretty good and D was fantastic as always!

I just watched this today from redbox, I give it a solid 3 1/2 stars out of 5. I'd give it a four but you kind of knew what was going to happen from the very beginning. Denzel was good in it.

MoBettaBliss said:

nymphomaniac 1 and 2 (edited)

i have a love/hate relationship with lars von trier's films... while there were some aspects of this that were well done, overall it didn't grab me

i think lars kinda jumped the shark for me a while ago

2.5/5

I think we had a conversation about this movie in a previous incarnation of this thread. It was my least favorite van Trier film, and I've generally loved everything he's done. This is probably the only film by him I have little desire to watch again.

Ernest & Celestine (2012) - The story of an unlikely friendship between a bear, Ernest, and a young mouse named Celestine.



My second viewing of this movie and I liked it more than the first time.

Ace said:

Fauxie said:

Foxcatcher 3.5/10 (I'll qualify this. It's well put together in general with a quality feel to it, and well acted, but one of the least enjoyable movies I've seen in a long time. Couldn't wait for it to end)

Bennett Miller is an awesome director, but this just doesn't appeal to me. Looks super-depressing.

Yeah, it was a weird one for me. Looked nice, and everyone played their parts well. Everything about it says good quality movie, but I got about halfway through and was just thinking about how much I was hating watching it, just willing it to end. It's all long silences and hugging and pats on the back, and that's not including the wrestling. It's without doubt the movie with the most hugging and patting on the back I've ever seen. It got to the point where that's all I was noticing and it was making me shudder anytime any character touched another.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead prt 2.

three stars. i didn't like this one as much as the first, but it was still good. both are worth watching; about the journey of a very overweight, very ill man who goes on a juice/vegetable/fruit fast for sixty days and how he transforms his life through better nutrition.

I watched "The Good Lie" last night. It was not very good.

This movie revolves around The Lost Boys of Sudan, who were displaced due to civil war. BTW, not only males were displaced, but I digress.

It's a captivating subject matter, but the movie was poorly done. For instance, we see Paul getting hooked on weed and, of course, losing interest in everything. And yet later in the movie, he is seemingly back on track. Did he kick the weed addiction? Did he lose his job over his drugginess or not? What happened to the two shiftless white dudes that turned him into a doper?

I loved the Jeremiah character but again, unanswered questions. He was told not to give spoiled food to homeless people. Which is cool, because spoiled food like fruits and vegetables could make someone sick or worse. And yet, we see Jeremiah quitting his job because his boss yelled at him for giving spoiled tomatoes to a homeless person. Certainly spoiled tomatoes could make you sick, so why take a stand over that? His boss was right. Jeremiah should not have given spoiled tomatoes to anyone. Why didn't they make Jeremiah quit because he got yelled at for giving, say, cereal to a homeless person? Then his quitting would have made some sense.

And Theo. Theo! SPOILER ALERT COMING.

So don't read further if for some reason you are interested in this movie but haven't watched it.

How did Theo survive?!? His story must have been INCREDIBLE. But we are told nothing about how he survived capture, what he did fror 15+ years, and how he ended up at the refugee camp. What a story he must have had, but we were told none of it. Bummer!

And then Theo ends up going to the USA - under his brother's name! Now, as inept as the State Department and the INS might be, you know that sooner or later they are going to find out who Theo is. And when they do, this story will ultimately have a sad ending. So therefore, the "good lie" was not really a good lie at all.

And did Memete ever become a doctor? What was his schooling? Why didn't they summarize what happened to these characters at the end of the movie, instead of just telling us that 200,000 or so Lost Boys were ultimately relocated to the USA?

Finally, the Reese Witherspoon character was not very likeable. And what kind of Hollywood director passes up the chance for a 45-second "Two white chicks cleaning the pig-sty apartment" montage set to a classic '60's R&B song? All we see is Witherspoon's pig-sty apartment, and then presto! She and the other lady are boozing it up with tequila in a crystal-clean apartment. C'mon, the cleaning-montage-set-to-a-classic-'60's-R&B-song montage is a Hollywood staple!

Like I said, the subject of The Lost Boys is compelling. I am guessing that someone has made a real documentary about this that is 1,000 times better than this movie.

I rate "The Good Lie" only 1 star out of 5.

.

[Edited 1/5/15 9:37am]

Fauxie said:

It's without doubt the movie with the most hugging and patting on the back I've ever seen.

RodeoSchro said:

SPOILER ALERT COMING.

So don't read further if for some reason you are interested in this movie but haven't watched it.

How did Theo survive?!? His story must have been INCREDIBLE. But we are told nothing about how he survived capture, what he did fror 15+ years, and how he ended up at the refugee camp. What a story he must have had, but we were told none of it. Bummer!

And then Theo ends up going to the USA - under his brother's name! Now, as inept as the State Department and the INS might be, you know that sooner or later they are going to find out who Theo is. And when they do, this story will ultimately have a sad ending. So therefore, the "good lie" was not really a good lie at all.

And did Memete ever become a doctor? What was his schooling? Why didn't they summarize what happened to these characters at the end of the movie, instead of just telling us that 200,000 or so Lost Boys were ultimately relocated to the USA?

Finally, the Reese Witherspoon character was not very likeable. And what kind of Hollywood director passes up the chance for a 45-second "Two white chicks cleaning the pig-sty apartment" montage set to a classic '60's R&B song? All we see is Witherspoon's pig-sty apartment, and then presto! She and the other lady are boozing it up with tequila in a crystal-clean apartment. C'mon, the cleaning-montage-set-to-a-classic-'60's-R&B-song montage is a Hollywood staple!

I see you ask the same kinds of questions about movies as I tend to (re: plot holes). Always love reading your reviews!

The Whole Nine Yards

belatedly (since it was released in 2000) i loved it! very funny. matthew perry and bruce willis are perfect together, just the right mix of comedy and timing. highly recommend.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) - When Hiccup and Toothless discover an ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild dragons and the mysterious Dragon Rider, the two friends find themselves at the center of a battle to protect the peace.

Looking back through the movie threads, I rated the first movie a 4/5 so apparently I liked that one more. 1/2

Finally watched "Her" and "August Osage County". Hard movies to get into for some reason but good acting!

4 stars

The Equalizer

Tu dors Nicole (English language title: You're Sleeping, Nicole)

Saw this on the big screen, last night, at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The director was in attendance. From tiff.net:

A critical hit at Cannes, the third fiction feature by Stéphane Lafleur once again displays his trademark absurdist humour and sense of ennui, honing in on twentysomethings at an existential crossroads. Nicole (Julianne Côté) is adrift after college graduation, working a dead-end summer job in her small Quebec hometown and spending evenings with her best pal, Véronique. When her older brother Remi (Marc-André Grondin, C.R.A.Z.Y.) unexpectedly returns with his bandmates in tow, disrupting the girls' half-baked summer, it becomes clear to Nicole that something must — and will — change. Shot in luminous black and white and infused with a sultry melancholy, Tu dors Nicole brilliantly captures that liminal stage where the fading yet familiar attachments of childhood still seem far more appealing, precious, and real than the sterility of the grown-up world.

The cinematography is freaking GORGEOUS. Masterfully directed, as well. It's what I would call a "mood piece". No earth-shattering observations here, but I really enjoyed it.

Available in the iTunes Store (at least in Canada), Jan. 13. I would assume there'll be at least a DVD release in other countries.

3/4