In Bruges (2008) - Guilt-stricken after a job gone wrong, hitman Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be.



It's a Christmas favorite of mine. And my first time seeing it since I vistited Bruges also around the holidays because of this film. (out of five)

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"Intimate Grammar" 4/5

Batman Returns (1992)

Another holiday favorite--watching this again in the wake of Christopher Nolan's ultra-realistic Dark Knight trilogy makes it look more fanciful than ever. It comes across almost like a Dr. Seuss version of Batman. I do love it though. 1/2

Continuing my Christmas movie marathon:



Eyes Wide Shut (1999) - A New York City doctor, who is married to an art curator, pushes himself on a harrowing and dangerous night-long odyssey of sexual and moral discovery after his wife admits that she once almost cheated on him.

It's a fascinating tale about marital secrets and infidelity. The Christmas season makes for a nice backdrop.

[Edited 12/24/13 9:00am]

The Tower

On Christmas Eve at Tower Sky, an ultra-luxurious building complex, a White Christmas party is held to dazzle its equally high-end tenants and VIP guests. Dae-ho, the manager of the building and single father, is forced to cancel plans with his daughter Hana to work the event. His Christmas is saved when Yoon-hee, the food mall manager with a secret crush on Dae-ho, offers to babysit Hana during the party. Meanwhile, Young-ki the legendary fire chief of Yoido Station has finally promised his first holiday date night to his long suffering wife. The party is in full swing with the spectacular sight of two helicopters flying overhead just to spray snow on the partygoers and make everything perfect. When unthinkable disaster strikes, Dae-ho and Young-ki must summon all their strength and courage to save the lives of thousands but at what cost to themselves and their loved ones?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2554270/

Despite the 9/11 comparisons, this is a good movie. Nice touches of humor.

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[Edited 12/24/13 17:54pm]

SUPRMAN said:

Our Nixon - 3.5/5 - no revelations or surprises, but interesting to watch in a 'time capsule' sense.

Enter the Void - 4/5 A movie that becomes more enjoyable (& more ridiculous, at least in its ending) the more I watch it.

Hansel & Gretel : Witch Hunters

*** of 5

I thought it was alright. Had some gore, action, easy enough plot line for teens etc.

sexton said:

Batman Returns (1992)

Another holiday favorite--watching this again in the wake of Christopher Nolan's ultra-realistic Dark Knight trilogy makes it look more fanciful than ever. It comes across almost like a Dr. Seuss version of Batman. I do love it though. 1/2

This is my favorite movie ever. Its more inline with the comics, its suppose to be fantastical. Nolan sucked the life out of Batman and made it boring. Very good movie visually and well acted.

damosuzuki said:

Enter the Void - 4/5 A movie that becomes more enjoyable (& more ridiculous, at least in its ending) the more I watch it.

I've only seen this once and gave it the same score. I have it on blu-ray and should watch it again. I could see myself liking it even more.

Un conte de Noël / A Christmas Tale (2008) - The Vuillard family is no stranger to physical/mental illness, loss, and banishment. But when the matriarch becomes in need of a transplant, the whole family is forced to come together, emotional baggage and all, just in time for Christmas.

This is my favorite Christmas movie.

AMERICAN HUSTLE - *** out of ****

Got there late and had an "upclose experience" but it had me right from the beginning with it's "Good Fellas" narration and it's odd 70s selection of music. Some of the outfits looked fake (as with some of the hair) but at the end it was a good movie for what it accomplished.

Now this Scorcese/DeCraprio movie better not let me down, I'll be back here for that tomorrow!

sexton said:

damosuzuki said:

Enter the Void - 4/5 A movie that becomes more enjoyable (& more ridiculous, at least in its ending) the more I watch it.

I've only seen this once and gave it the same score. I have it on blu-ray and should watch it again. I could see myself liking it even more.

In some ways it reminds me a little of Upstream Colour in that I think both films are a little silly & that both probably get taken a little too seriously by their cult of fans. I like both of them as head trips, fun movies to zone out to or have playing in the background like film equivalents of an ambient Brian Eno record or something.

Warrior - 4/5 Another re-watch - sports film cliches & a few plot contrivances keep it from being really great, but I got far more than I ever expected to get from a movie about MMA.

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

This has become quite the juggernaut in terms of merchandising. (You can find a Nightmare Before Christmas anything it seems.) Despite the oversaturation, I still find the movie visually stunning and enjoy watching it every so often.

I just saw American Hustle. I LOVED it. Such a fun movie with a killer 70s soundtrack.

American Hustle 4 out of 5

Good movie, the fashion was a little disturbing, especially on the male side. I don't know much about 70's fashion but all Amy Adams wore were these low v cut dresses. Was this really what women wore?

[Edited 12/27/13 13:16pm]

[img:$uid]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Paradise_-_Love_%282012_film%29.jpg[/img:$uid]

3/5

The last movie I watched was "Faster" with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. This movie was kind of good. But also kind of bad. In other words, it was the perfect movie to watch on the day after Christmas! Here is my synopsis. SPOILER ALERT - I'm going to tell you how it ends, but not until the end of my post. So if you love my writing but don't want to know that The Rock kills everyone, don't read the past paragraph.

Wait....shucks.

The Rock is getting out of prison. He's served 10 years for a bank robbery - a bank robbery in which he didn't even get to keep the money! Man, that is a bummer, isn't it?

It seems The Rock and his buddies got sold out by someone, who formed a gang to come over to The Rock's house, kill everyone, and steal the bank robbery money. They killed The Rock's brother, and they tried to kill The Rock but of course, you cannot kill The Rock. In this case, they shot him in the brain but failed to consider that The Rock doesn't have much of a brain. Therefore, the prison doctors put a steel plate in The Rock's head. Gotta love ObamaCare!

So what does The Rock do when they open the gates of the prison? He starts running. And he doesn't stop until he reaches a junkyard, where he finds (his?) Chevy LS 454 Chevelle under a tarp. Hey, did you know that a Chevy LS 454 Chevelle is a $100K car? I did! And did you wander how a broke bank robber was able to afford a $100K car? I did! And did you wonder how a $100K car was able to sit for 10 years in a junkyard, under a tarp, unmolested, and start right up as soon as The Rock turned the key? I did! But then I decided to quit wondering stuff, because that only got in the way of the plot.

Something you need to know at this point - Billy Bob Thornton is a cop who has a heroin addiction, likes to smoke, and doesn't own a razor. Also, he's 10 days away from retirement. TEN DAYS AWAY FROM RETIREMENT. I don't have to tell you what's going to happen to him, do I?

Has ANY movie cop that was TEN DAYS AWAY FROM RETIREMENT ever made it to retirement? That is a rhetorical question that I won't answer; otherwise, you would learn that Billy Bob Thornton does not, in fact, make it to retirement.

Wait....shucks, I did it again.

So The Rock gets a list of all the guys that had robbed him, killed everyone including his brother, and thought they'd killed him. Now, ask yourself this - ten years after stealing the money from a big bank robbery, what do you think this gang of hoodlums is doing now? You'll NEVER guess.

Oh, wait - something else you need to know. There's this English guy who overcame polio, sold his software company for $44 million, lives in a freaking AWESOME house with a super-hot blonde, and is.....a hitman. Why, you ask, is this rich, handsome, supersuccessful English guy a hitman? Because he's bored. Duh! Also, his girlfriend thinks him being a hitman is super sexy. Remember that.

Now, back to The Rock. Do NOT get the wrong idea from my review. Although I've typed many interesting paragraphs, and it seems like we must be about an hour into this movie, we really aren't. In fact, The Rock starts killing people about five minutes into this movie. That's one of the good things about this movie.

The first guy he kills works as a telemarketer. Yep - a bank robber daylights as a telemarketer. The Rock just marches in, shoots the guy, and couldn't care less about who saw him or how many cameras videotaped him. Yeah, Rock! Stick it to the man!

Billy Bob Thornton is given this case. Did I mention he is TEN DAYS AWAY FROM RETIREMENT? Actually, he doesn't get the case so much as he is assigned to work on it with a hot female detective. He harumphs and garumphs about it - mainly because the girl won't let him smoke - but he's part of the team. Oh, in addition to being a heroin addict, Billy Bob Thornton had also recently slit his wrist in an apparent suicide attempt.

To recap Billy Bob Thornton: (1) He is TEN DAYS AWAY FROM RETIREMENT; (2) He has a heroin addiction; (3) He slit his wrist; (4) He has an ex- or estranged wife who naturally hates his guts because he has to work cop hours; (5) He has a son who wants to play baseball and is wholly unsuited for the task; and (6) He really loves to smoke but no one ever lets him finish a cigarette. Do you sympathize with Billy Bob Thornton yet?

Once again, back to The Rock. He kills the telemarketer and then hops into his Chevy LS 454 Chevelle and hauls ass to the next guy - a creepy old dude who lives in an apartment and lures unsuspecting women in to drug them and then film his snuffing of them. The Rock gets there just in time to kill the creepy old guy who, it turns out, had also filmed the incident whereby he and his buddies robbed and killed all The Rock's friends. This snuff tape was legendary.

But hey - guess who shows up in a Ferrari at the same time? The English hitman! He's there to kill The Rock. How did he know The Rock was alive? How did he know where The Rock would be? How come he can fire 25 rounds at The Rock in a hallway and miss every time? How can The Rock escape from the hallway, go down several flights of stairs, and get away before the English hitman figures out The Rock is gone?

All salient questions. But if you're reading this for the answers, better skip to the next paragraph.

The Rock figures the person who sold out him and his buddies was his own father. So he goes to see his mom, but she says, "Nope. Your dad was a piece of scum but he wouldn't sell out his own sons". To which The Rock replies, "Yes, he would". But it turns out to be moot as the dad is dead and now resides in an urn up on the fireplace. The Rock takes the urn with him and goes to get the next guy on his list.

All this while, Billy Bob Thornton is doing nothing worth mentioning.

The next guy is a big bouncer. This is the guy that slit The Rock's brother's throat. The Rock corners him in a restroom. Actually, this guy is pretty cool, for a lowlife throat-slitter. He makes the old bathroom attendant leave so that he and The Rock can fight it out to the death. Of course, this guy has his knife - presumably the same knife that he slit The Rock's brother's throat with. And all The Rock has is an ice pick he picked up inside the club. How he got it, we really don't know.

The Rock wins, stabs the bad guy several times, and lets the bad guy bleed out on the floor. The bad guy, who again is actually a pretty cool dude for a throat-slitter, give The Rock his cellphone and asks The Rock to call his son and tell him he (the throat-slitter) is sorry. Of course The Rock, being a humanitarian, agrees to do this and does it after he drives away from da club.

But wait! It turns out the bad guy didn't die! The Rock is a hundred miles away when he hears on the Chevy LS 454 Chevelle's AM radio that the guy is actually fighting for his life at the hospital. So The Rock turns around, drives to the hospital, and shoots the guy six times.

But somehow, Billy Bob Thornton figured out The Rock was going to be there and so he is waiting on The Rock. He chases The Rock down to the basement, where The Rock gets the drop on Billy Bob Thornton and has his pistol sitting in Billy Bob Thornton's head. But The Rock does not kill Billy Bob Thornton. You see, The Rock has scruples.

While all this is going in, the English hitman proposes to his girlfriend. You see, when the English hitman showed up at the creepy old snuff film guy's apartment, he was also on the phone having a session with his therapist. They agreed the English hitman needed to get married.

So he does, and the honeymoon is classic! He and his bride drive their Ferraris to the desert and, still dressed in their wedding clothes, shoot bottles and stuff. Then the English hitman agrees to retire being a hitman (but not retire being English).

The next guy on The Rock's list is a born-again preacher. This guy had been the lookout at the robbery/killing, and when The Rock's brother got his throat slit, this guy had tried to stop it. But so what? He's on the list!

He's having a tent revival in the desert, and The Rock shows up. Long story short, The Rock spares this guy. But guess who shows up?

Billy Bob Thornton!

I hate to tell you this, but I forgot what happens to the English hitman. He goes out to get The Rock one last time, and his wife goes crazy nuts. Remember, literally four days ago (in movie time), she was orgasming over his guns and hitman lifestyle. But now that she's his WIFE, she does a 180 and goes all weepy-eyed white girl when the English hitman gets in his Ferrari to go find The Rock.

So The Rock and the English hitman have a chase scene, and The Rock TOTALLY outdrives the English hitman, proving once again that a 1970 American muscle car is better than a Ferrari F450, but the chase ends with no real conclusion. I think The Rock got shot but was OK.

Back to the revival tent. The Rock lets the preacher go, and Billy Bob Thornton shows up. Guess what? Billy Bob Thornton was the guy that sold out The Rock! So he shoots The Rock in the head - right there in the tent! He's going to Hell for sure!

Then the English hitman shows up somehow, and it turns out Billy Bob Thornton had hired him. Even though the English hitman didn't actually kill The Rock, Billy Bob Thornton still pays him the agreed-upon fee. What, you may ask, is the going rate for hiring an independently wealthy English hitman?

$1!

I'm not kidding - one dollar! The English hitman climbs in his Ferrari and leaves. Billy Bob Thornton turns around and guess who's there?

The Rock! The Rock figures out that Billy Bob Thornton is the guy behind all the unpleasantness, but Billy Bob Thornton can't figure out how The Rock is still alive. He just shot The Rock in the head, for crying out loud!

Well, we can thank those fine doctors at the prison hospital, because their steel plate deflected Billy Bob Thornton's shot, thus saving The Rock's life. So now, let me set this up for you:

BILLY BOB THORNTON IS NOW ONLY SIX DAYS AWAY FROM RETIREMENT. He's responsible for many deaths, and the guy he just shot in the head is now pointing a huge pistol at him. Do you think we will be having a Billy Bob Thornton Retirement Party?

No way!

Kaboom, and good bye Billy Bob Thornton. The Rock hops in his Chevy LS 454 Chevelle just as the cops show up, and he leaves. No one chases him.

This was a long review but I haven't watched many movies lately, so I had to get this all out of my system.

I give this movie 50% of whatever rating system you want. No matter if you rate by stars, thumbs-up, or dead bodiesl, "Faster" gets half of them.

The Wolf of Wall Street.

WORST. FILM. OF. SCORSESE'S. ENTIRE. CAREER.

WORST. FILM. OF. 2013.

WORST. FILM. OF. THE. LAST. DECADE.

ONLY. FILM. I'VE. EVER. SEEN. THAT. WAS. WORSE. WAS. MR. MIKE'S. MONDO. VIDEO.

If The Wolf of Wall Street was supposed to be a comedy it is seriously unfunny, and if it's supposed to be a drama it is a joke. Either way the moviegoer loses.

Christian Marclay's The Clock is the Best Film I've seen in 2013. Watched 3:20pm to 7:20pm today at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

1/2

The visuals were great. But the story left me ho-hum.

wolf of wall street is the funniest freakin thing

luvsexy4all said:

wolf of wall street is the funniest freakin thing

Hope so, some reviews are making me afraid to see something unexpected.

PurpleJedi said:

1/2

The visuals were great. But the story left me ho-hum.

I give it 3.14 stars

The last movie I watched was one I found "on demand" in Netflix:



I was pleasantly surprised by this flick for many reasons:

It has a fantastic cast of great actors, including a virtually unrecognizable Sharon Stone as Linda Lovelace's mother, Peter Sarsgaard as abusive hubby Chuck Traynor, and Amanda Seyfried in the lead role of Linda Lovelace.

I think the movie was tastefully done. It unfolded initially in a way to show the perceived rise to fame of Lovelace, but then took a turn to show the reality of what was really going on - the subject of the porn actress's biography (and the basis of this movie). The movie depicted how she actually had to take a polygraph test prior to publishing her 1980 autobiography Ordeal, which details her years of Traynor physically and sexually abusing her, as well as controlling all of her earnings. If the facts were true, it is very sad to think she made "Deep Throat" with a gun pointed at her, that her husband sold her into prostitution situations at gunpoint, and that - despite her 17 days total working in porn films - she would be forever plagued by personal circumstances that severely affected her life. Tragically, she died at the age of 53 in Denver from injuries sustained in a car accident in 2002. Chuck Traynor died three months later from a fatal heart attack.

[Edited 12/28/13 16:46pm]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) - The dwarves, along with Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey, continue their quest to reclaim Erebor, their homeland, from Smaug. Bilbo Baggins is in possession of a mysterious and magical ring.

I watched it in IMAX 3D with the increased frame rate which I thought looked wonderful. The biggest weakness for me is still the story. 1/2

McJagger said:

The Wolf of Wall Street.

WORST. FILM. OF. SCORSESE'S. ENTIRE. CAREER.

WORST. FILM. OF. 2013.

WORST. FILM. OF. THE. LAST. DECADE.

ONLY. FILM. I'VE. EVER. SEEN. THAT. WAS. WORSE. WAS. MR. MIKE'S. MONDO. VIDEO.

If The Wolf of Wall Street was supposed to be a comedy it is seriously unfunny, and if it's supposed to be a drama it is a joke. Either way the moviegoer loses.

r u some kinda tight ass or sumptin?

FormerlyKnownAs said: