I'm only 1/3 through "The Astronaut's Wife" but if I finish it, I can guarantee you it's going to get the full RodeoSchro treatment.

Last night I watched

5 STARS.Marisa Tomei is so hot.

damosuzuki said:

sexton said:

damosuzuki said:

The Loneliest Planet – I have no problem with movies that are slowly paced or contemplative, that take their time to get where they’re going as long as they go somewhere worthwhile, but this droned on for 113 of the longest minutes of my life. If it had been a little shorter and had fewer endless shots of people walking and walking and walking I would have probably really liked it, but instead it left me feeling completely exhausted and bored. 1.5/5

I really liked it. The anticipation of the 'event' in the first half and then the tension afterward in the second half had me on the edge of my seat almost. Maybe if I didn't know anything about the movie before seeing it, I would have found it boring waiting for something, anything to happen, but the limited knowledge I did have going in made it near thriller-like--as odd a description as that may be for this film. 4/5

No lie, I was originally going to write ‘this is a movie only sexton could love,’ but I thought that might come across as a little pissy or a bit of a shot, not in the spirit of the season and all that – plus, of course, it wouldn’t be true since lots of critics praised it. I watched it because it was one of the weekly recommends on a recent Filmspotting podcast, & it has a pretty good RT rating.

I completely understand where you’re coming from because in principle this was my kind of movie. I actually think I liked everything the movie did, particularly the way the characters dealt with the aftermath of the big moment and how they refused to directly address anything. If it had been shorter & contained fewer interminable shots of people walking and walking and walking I bet I would have liked it just fine.

damosuzuki said:

"Django"! Tarantino is one of the best filmmakers of this generation and he seems to nearly outdo himself with every new film. DiCaprio, Jackson, Waltz, and Foxx were all very good in their roles. Even though some have said the movie should be boycotted, I don't know on what basis. This is definitely one of the best films of the year! If you like Tarantino, you will like this!

cfunk said:

"Django"! Tarantino is one of the best filmmakers of this generation and he seems to nearly outdo himself with every new film. DiCaprio, Jackson, Waltz, and Foxx were all very good in their roles. Even though some have said the movie should be boycotted, I don't know on what basis. This is definitely one of the best films of the year! If you like Tarantino, you will like this!

Can't wait to see it! Going to see it with my son next week.

Les Miserables

I have never seen the play and had no idea what the story was about so it was great to go into it without expectation and to let it unfold on me.

Jack and Anne were amazing and Russell Crowe, mmmmm I kind of took his singing for what it was. He played a creep character so I didn't expect him to sing too well I ended up crying, which I thought would be hard to do with all the singing but the tears came. I thought the story was compelling and now I want to see how this transaltes on stage.

I give this between 3 1/2 & 4

Saw this earlier today with my daughter....a bit of pulp, it didn't know if it was an action movie or a detective one and so fell somewhere inbetween.

Tom Cruise (5ft 7) plays Jack Reacher (6ft 5) an ex MP drifting freely across the USA who picks up from the News, that one of his old cases has resurfaced in Pittsburgh. He goes to Pittsburgh with the intention of putting him away for good.

Unknown to Jack, James Barr has asked for him, before been knocked into a coma by fellow prisoners.

Jack at the beconning of Barr's lawyer, Helen, begins to investigate futher and opens a can of snakes.

A couple of Red herrings but overall plot by numbers type story.

You may have seen the trailer where Jack leaves a slowly moving vechicle and walks into a bus queue, before said vechicle is surronded by the police. The people in the bus queue help to obscure Jack from the chasing police. My daughter (11) was really put out by this because in reality these people should be running like hell or drawing the police attention to their wanted man. But this is Hollywood I tried to explain....but the girl has got a point

2/5

[Edited 12/28/12 15:42pm]

johnart said:

Les Miserables

Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman are awesomely on point and award-worthy.

Baron Cohen and Helena are good but surprisingly meek in their over the top roles.

Russell Crow fucking sucks and destroys one of the shows best songs with his flat-ass singing.

The movie feels like it will never end but it's well executed overall.

3 1/2 our of 5

That's a shame, but I still plan on seeing it. You must be referring to this song:

Too bad, Phillip Quast is too old to reprise his role, but then again he's not a recognizable actor.

[Edited 12/28/12 15:54pm]

ZombieKitten said:

damosuzuki said:

No lie, I was originally going to write ‘this is a movie only sexton could love,’ but I thought that might come across as a little pissy or a bit of a shot, not in the spirit of the season and all that – plus, of course, it wouldn’t be true since lots of critics praised it. I watched it because it was one of the weekly recommends on a recent Filmspotting podcast, & it has a pretty good RT rating.

I completely understand where you’re coming from because in principle this was my kind of movie. I actually think I liked everything the movie did, particularly the way the characters dealt with the aftermath of the big moment and how they refused to directly address anything. If it had been shorter & contained fewer interminable shots of people walking and walking and walking I bet I would have liked it just fine.

Please tell me you couldn't watch Summer Hours (I watched that on Sexton's recommendation )

I've never seen summer hours, but I see that it has Juliet Binoche in it (a big selling point for Sexton perhaps). If I'm going to be bored, I'd rather be bored while looking at her (as opposed to being bored while watching some hairy guy walking and walking and walking for two hours).

I watched Kill List again last night. I think it ends poorly, but I've watched it a few times because I find everything up to that point so creepy and odd. I still don't think the ending makes any sense (and the reveal at the end is a bit obvious), & that keeps it from being elevated to the status of a really, really good film IMO, but I do like everything else it does up to that point, and the more I've seen of it the more I like it.

Against my better judgment, we finished "The Astronaut's Wife". There are so many things wrong with this movie that I feel compelled to start with a haiku:

This film was so dumb.

Only redeeming feature?

Charlize Theron's lips.

OK, now I've said all the nice things about it that I can. But in case anyone else is thinking of making an astronaut movie, as a public service I will list the flaws in this turkey.

First of all, we're to believe that Depp and Theron live in Florida. Florida! WTF?!? All astronauts live in Houston! They train at the Johnson Space Center. They practice space walks at the giant pool at Ellington Field. They. All. Live. In. HOUSTON. Specifically, they live in the part of Houston known as Clear Lake. This is where I live, too.

I am pretty sure that every time this movie was shown here in Clear Lake, the entire audience probably threw tomatoes at the screen during the scene where Theron is shown to be a school teacher in Florida. It's not that we don't like Florida. We LOVE Florida. But no astronauts live there.

By all rights, those scenes should have been shot in Clear Lake, and I probably should have been cast as one of the other astronauts.

So anyway, the movie revolves around a ridiculous premise - Depp and another astronaut are doing a space walk, there's an explosion, and NASA loses contact with the two astronauts for two minutes. What happened during those two minutes? Who knows? And trust me, who cares?

NASA brings the shuttle back pronto, and runs tests on Depp and the other guy. Depp seems fine, but the other guy has a seizure, and then later has the audacity to die at the party NASA threw for him and Depp. That party scene was the only cool thing about the movie. They put up a cool tent at the end of a runway. That IS exactly how NASA rolls!

So the other guy is dead, and at the after-funeral party at his house, his wife goes nuts and electrocutes herself by jumping in a bathtub while holding a 1950's-style radio that's plugged in. BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTT! Fried lady!

All the while there's this mysterious NASA man named Mr. Reese, who seems to always be where ever Depp is. Who is Mr. Reese? What is he doing? Does he have a first name?

Depp has decided to leave the astronaut corps and take a job with an aerospace company, which means a move from Clear La....errrrrr, Florida, to New York City. Theron, who seems during this entire movie to be spaced out on Xanax, reluctantly agrees.

BTW, Depp's characterization of an astronaut is about 180 degrees from reality. I know a lot of astronauts, and none of them are even remotely as brash as Depp. He does look good, though. He cleans up well. Also, he drinks a lot but looks really cool doing it.

They move to New York City where Depp, who is now apparently being paid $10 million a year based on the apartment they live in, is in charge of building some great plane for his new company.

The company has a party to introduce Depp, who gets blasted and then puts the wood to Theron in a very, very rough manner. It's at this point that Theron begins to get suspicious. I guess Depp was more of a sensitive lover before he got infected by the Space Monkey, or whatever he saw on that bogus mission.

Of course, Theron gets pregnant - and with twins! Woohoo! Who wouldn't be happy about that?

Theron, that's who. But to be fair, she is never happy about anything in this movie. Here is a recap of pretty much everything she said in the movie. She's talking to the wife of the other astronaut:

THERON: Our husbands could have died!

OTHER WIFE (THE ONE THAT FRIES HERSELF LATER): But they didn't!

THERON: But they could have DIED!

OTHER WIFE: But they didn't!

THERON: But, but, but - THEY COULD HAVE DIED!!!!!

OTHER WIFE (WHO WE WISH WOULD HAVE SLAPPED THERON AT THIS POINT): BUT THEY DIDN'T, YOU MISERABLE WENCH! NOW GO AWAY, I'M GOING TO FRY MYSELF!!!!!

Depp starts saying weird things to Theron's belly, like: "This is where I live now" and "I'm inside of you now" and "Now we are one". This freaks Theron out.

At this point, two people show up - Theron's sister, who serves no purpose other than to get killed by Depp later on; and Mr. Reese. Yay, Mr. Reese!

Mr. Reese is no longer with NASA. It seems he read the medical charts on Depp and the other guy, and they were almost, but not quite, normal. Something was amiss, and Mr. Reese brought that to the attention of "NASA" and of course, "NASA" promptly fired him.

At first Theron is skeptical but Mr. Reese tells her that the other astronaut's wife - the one who fried herself - was pregnant. Pregnant with twins! That seals the deal. Theron completely buys what Mr. Reese is selling.

They are supposed to meet again, where Mr. Reese has something he has to show her. As Theron is walking up the subway stairs, Depp shows up on the street. He can't see Theron because she's not yet to the top of the stairs. But Mr. Reese is on the street, and that's who Depp engages, and then takes out for a cup of coffee. Oh, and Depp takes Mr. Reese's briefcase. How thoughtful! Also, this means the end of Mr. Reese.

Theron goes to her school, opens her mailbox, and in it is a letter from Mr. Reese. How did that get there?!? Anywhooo, there's a key to a storage locker with the notation "Be careful!". Theron goes to the storage locker.

What a storage locker! It's almost like a study - it has everything! Tables, chairs, and tons and tons of newspaper clippings. There's also a videotape with a post-it on it that says, "For Jillian". I just now remembered that was Theron's name.

Theron takes the videotape home and watches it. Mr. Reese opens the tape by saying, "If you're watching this, I'm probably fucking DEAD!" Yep, he is fucking dead, although we never got to see Depp actually kill him.

Mr. Reese tells Theron that he thinks something entered Depp and the other astronaut during those two minutes, and that now Depp isn't really Depp. He says some other stuff, like his theory that whatever Space Monkey entered Depp had to do it when it had a chance at two astronauts, and that's why all the other spacewalks in history didn't end with Space Monkeys possessing all our astronauts' bodies. I know, that makes absolutely no sense at all. What are you going to do?

Now Theron is pretty sure Depp is really a Space Monkey, so she goes to the one person she can trust - the wife of the CEO of the company Depp now works for. She's only met this person once, but they got along really well. So, what does a nice new friend like this do for Theron?

Gets her abortion pills!

No, really. That's what she does. Frankly, of all the unbelievable things in this crappy movie, this was the most unbelievable. To make it worse, when she hands the pills to Theron, she says, "Now you understand - with these, all sales are final". Whoever wrote that line ought to be drummed out of the Screenwriters Guild.

Theron goes home but has a problem swallowing the pills and aborting her fetuses, which probably are Space Monkey fetuses but she's just not 100% sure. However, she ultimately convinces herself that the fetuses ARE Space Monkeys, and is just about to swallow the pills when Depp shows up.

He's pretty mad about Theron wanting to abort his Space Monkey babies, and slaps Theron around. She ends up at the top of the stairs, and throws herself down the stairs in an old-fashioned abortion attempt.

But alas, the Space Monkeys survived the fall. Theron is put in the hospital, where Depp tells her he's going to keep the circumstances to himself, or else they'd lock Theron up in a mental hospital or jail. Despite this chivalrous act, Theron still despises Space Monkey Depp.

So she busts out of the hospital at night, grabs a cab, and realizes Depp is in the cab behind her. She runs out of the cab, and suddenly it's daylight! She's at this cool fountain when who should be standing behind her? Space Monkey Depp!

Carrying Space Monkey fetuses must have given Theron psychic abilities, because she has been having dreams where she sees stuff that happens. For instance, she sees the episode in space (although there's not much to see). She also sees that Depp has killed her sister. And from time to time, she can see the Space Monkey fetuses inside her. I'm no expert on what fetuses look like, so I don't know if the Space Monkey fetuses are weird or not.

Theron runs to their apartment, and just does beat Space Monkey Depp to the elevator. She gets inside the apartment, deadbolts the door and puts a table in front of it, and then turns on all the water in the apartment.

Depp bursts through the door and sees Theron standing in a pool of water, holding the exact same kind of radio that the other astronaut wife used to fry herself. How cool is that?!? Maybe every astronaut was issued a 1950's-era radio back then.

Theron tells Depp she knows he is a Space Monkey, and Depp admits it. Just then, the entire apartment gets flooded and Depp, who had studiously been moving to avoid standing in water, is suddenly on wet ground. Theron, who was sitting on a stool, lifts her feet off the ground and plugs in the radio.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Space Monkey Depp is fried like a hippy on Saturday night!

Only one problem - the Space Monkey slithers out of Depp and into Theron. Now Theron is a Space Monkey! After all that!

Flash forward six years, and Theron is re-married to a fighter pilot. Except, she has a new first name, and different-colored hair. She's given birth to two weird-looking twins who could be straight out of The Boys From Brazil" and it adamant that they are going to be "pilots" - just like her dead Space Monkey first husband, and current, non-Space Monkey fighter pilot husband.

THE END, except I have some questions:

1. Why did NASA fire Mr. Reese when, apparently, no one in the world but Mr. Reese knew of the Space Monkeys? Mr. Reese makes it sound like NASA is in on the Space Monkey conspiracy, but it's clear they weren't.

2. How come no other astronauts saw the Space Monkeys enter Depp and the other guy? The psychic episode where Theron saw the missing two minutes shows that the shuttle was clearly right next to the satellite. Anyone looking out the window would have seen what happened. Plus, every single thing that anyone does on the shuttle or on a space walk is videoed. There's just no way that no one saw what happened, except that's what the director wants you to believe.

3. How did the other astronaut boink and impregnate his wife so fast? He was always either in the hospital or having convulsions and dieing.

4. Exactly whose kids were those at the end? Space Monkey Theron referred to her current husband as "their father". Then what happened to the Space Monkey kids that Depp fathered? Or were those kids them? If so, how did Theron get re-married so quickly? And why did she change her name? And her hair?

5. Why did I watch the rest of this movie?

I give "The Astronaut's Wife" zero Space Monkeys out of a possible six Space Monkeys.

Here's a great sentence about "The Astronaut's Wife" lifted directly from its wikipedia page. Whoever wrote it felt the same way about the movie that I did. You can tell by how many words are in quotes:

Although there are metaphors suggesting that the twins might have actually been "Super Computers" created by alien Spencer to pilot the new "Prototype Jet" that was in development by "McClaren" company (in which Spencer started working after the "accident").

out of 5 Kanye stumps

Tilda gives a terrific performance and pretty much carries the movie. I didn't find the oldest teenager to be terribly believable. Sort of like Hayden Christianson's Darth Vader--he seemed more pouty than sinister.

The youngest vergion of Kevin with the ball rolling seen, though, was downright creepy.

Overall I give it 4 out of 5 because despite it's predictability and flaws, Tilda carries the movie.

[img:$uid]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61BQ1x9Q8HL._SL500_AA300_.jpg[/img:$uid]

Rare Exports -- A Christmas Tale (2010)

A real and unexpected treat.

7.5/10

White Chicks.................the best movie eva.......if your ever feeling down ......watch this movie will make you wet your pants....5/5

Contact...............thinking mans movie..philosophical.............5/5

Pitch Perfect...Our ozzzie Rebel Wilson shone in this movie...........

Purple Rain...Kitch.............the slapping noices didnt correlate with the physical contact......If I were Prince I would look back in shame.........and be embarrassed.....but good fun.....great to have a laugh .............and reminice about the 80's.....

The Naked Civil Servant.....John Hurt was phenominal in this character and I loved the historical value of the movie......Quentin Crisp was certainly one of a kind..

I have others but they dont spring to mind right now.....................

cheers

Max

Great if you're in the mood for an epic historical drama: has the action, the costuming, the story line involving love, valor, and betrayal. I guess I could go ahead and give it /5 .

I take away on star because I hated Joaquin Phoenix's facial make-up (which was supposed to make him look sinister, but only succeeded in making him look like Elvira's long lost brother)...and as a villain he came off not so much as being heartless, inherently evil or even tortured by pathos, rather than just being a whiny, punk mofo who was likely wetting the bed until he was 20 years old.

do you think frussell crowe is a friend of dorothys ?

Ottensen said:

Great if you're in the mood for an epic historical drama: has the action, the costuming, the story line involving love, valor, and betrayal. I guess I could go ahead and give it /5 .

I take away on star because I hated Joaquin Phoenix's facial make-up (which was supposed to make him look sinister, but only succeeded in making him look like Elvira's long lost brother)...and as a villain he came off not so much as being heartless, inherently evil or even tortured by pathos, rather than just being a whiny, punk mofo who was likely wetting the bed until he was 20 years old.

Not bad...6 out of 10 stars!

RodeoSchro said:

morningsong said:

RodeoSchro said:

Here's a great sentence about "The Astronaut's Wife" lifted directly from its wikipedia page. Whoever wrote it felt the same way about the movie that I did. You can tell by how many words are in quotes:

Die Hard 5 will be here soon.

The Lookout - 3/5 - a pretty good heist/thriller, undercut by a few elements that seemed a little too unbelievable & a too-happy ending. A large chunk of it was shot in my apartment block. I guess I blew my big chance to make something happen between me and Isla Fisher.

Jeff Who Lives at Home - 3/5 - I liked it a lot until the ending. I'm not sure if the end was meant as some kind of ironic commentary on something or other, but it slightly spoiled the rest of the film for me.

[Edited 1/1/13 5:24am]

[Edited 1/2/13 2:30am]

Why don't you ask ThisOne.

I know the last movie she saw.

iaminparties said:

Why don't you ask ThisOne.

I know the last movie she saw.

yes i just saw an epic

Kinda sappy at times. Decent ending. 5 out of 10 stars!

The young lady in the movie is going to ge a star and a knockout as

she gets older. Very pretty girl.

ZombieKitten said:

Please tell me you couldn't watch Summer Hours (I watched that on Sexton's recommendation )

That movie is excellent. 5/5 You are just uncouth. I think I'm going to watch it again right now so don't bother calling me anytime soon because I'll be way too immersed in it to answer my phone.

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.

Great Christmas movie. I liked it more than when I saw it the first time.

sexton said: