So I watch a LOT of movies, several a week and sometime several a day. I am going to try to keep this thread going with each movie I watch. I'm going to put up the movie poster, wiki or IMDB link, why I watched the movie (usually more than it looked interesting), and what I thought of it.

Feel free to add your own or comment on anything I post here. If you post a movie make sure it's the last one you watched, add a movie poster, links, and why you watched and what you thought.

The Great Silence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Silence

I put this one in the queue after watching the new Django. This was one of the the three movies that inspired it. I had already seen the original Django (loved it) and I have zero interest in watching Mandingo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_%28film%29

While I thought it was a little slow in parts over all it was pretty good. I liked the bad guy more than the good guy but then again the good didn't have many lines, just ARG! or UGH! I have to say I kept expecting certain characters to do certain things or even the whole movie to go in specific directions based on it's genre but it surprised me several times.

Overall I give it 4 out of 5 stars. You should see it if you like Spaghetti Westerns, pass if you don't.

Skyrim is eating into my movie time but that should even out soon.



RED
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RED_%282010_film%29

I'm not sure why this was in my Netflixs queue or who though it would be a good idea to have me watch it. This movie wasn't really a movie in the sense of movies having a narrative framed and defined by actors delivering dialog and actions according to some sort of plotted story. It was more several loosely related and lazily directed scenes that existed to showcase different actors playing their stock characters.

The action, boring. The twists, non-existent. The story, bare. The director, absent.

This was one of those movies where someone comes up to you and suggests seeing it, the conversation goes like this:

"Hey man! You gotta go see this new movie RED!"

"You seem excited about it, what is it about?"

"It has Bruce Willis in it! And Morgan Freemen and John Malkovich and and that dude who played Bones in the new Star Trek flick!"

"Well that's cool and all but what is it about?"

"Uhh... it has Mary-Louise Parker and Helen Mirren. I loved Parker in Weeds!"

"Yeah..."

People might say that they are just in it for the action and don't want to think about it to much. Even the action was dull! Even the tired out of no where 'Old guys kick ass' fight porn scenes.

I like Rodger Eberts quote on the film:



I give it 1 1/2 out 5 stars. If all you are interested in is seeing a certain list of actors sleep walk through their stock set ups then, boy oh boy, is this the movie for you.

I couldn't disagree with you more about Red. Also I told you a year and a half ago that it was a great movie, but you would hate it. Not sure if that got it on your list or not.

Apparently Chad saw a completely different movie than I did.

Retired CIA agent discovers a conspiracy to wipe out him and several of his co-workers (also retired) for their involvement in an incident that serves as a black mark on the Vice President's service record.

John Malkovich steals every scene he's in. Helen Mirren is wonderfully calm and casual about doing very violent things to people. Richard Dreyfuss is quite slimy.

I will agree that some of the cast seem to be playing themselves. Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis (but he has been ever since Pulp Fiction), and Mary-Louise Parker is Mary-Louise Parker (or at the very least, she hasn't shown that she can do anything besides Nancy Botwin). YMMV on these. Also, the shot of Bruce Willis simply stepping out of a moving car was a bit silly.

Overall, I quite liked the movie. It gave me everything that The Expendables promised (and didn't deliver).

-- Ben

I see how this thread is going to go. Chad watches a movie and comments on it. Everyone then tells him he is wrong.

p.s. loved Reds.

Sounds like a fun thread to me. . Actually though I always pick my words carefully when replying to opinions these days. Someone expressing an opinion that they like or dislike a movie cannot be wrong as it is just opinion. That is why I reply back that I disagree because it just means that my opinion is different than thiers.

Then once that is out of the way I deteriorate into argueing about the opinion and the reasons laid out for it.

Some reasons people give are 'just opinion'; others are verifiable or disputable truth-claims. If someone complains, for instance, that a historical drama gets some detail (like costuming, dialogue or the like) wrong, that's a truth-claim, and can be investigated. OTOH, whether or not anachronous (fuck you little red line, free dictionary lists it as an acceptable adjective version of the word) dialogue is worthy of down-rating a film over IS a matter of opinion.

That is very true.

And most of what I say here is my opinion and not fact.


Also, I have always found it amusing that people (speaking generally here and not about RED or anyone's comment on it) feel that if they enjoyed or liked something it must be/has to be good. They don't understand the concepts of 'Good to Them' or 'It's okay to enjoy something that is bad/poorly made'.

I think it's also human nature to comment on the negative. 'You didn't like the thing that I liked so I am going to tell you why you are wrong!' Welcometotheinternet.

No one commented on The Great Silence to agree or disagree or ask questions or whatever. Not that anyone needed to either, I'm essentially doing this for my own amusement and to get me thinking about and watching more movies. But it was a generally positive review so no one had anything to say. A negative review of RED and several comments. I think it's because people take a certain amount of ownership of things they like and see a perceived attack on something they like as a perceived attack on them as a person on some primal or sub conscious level. Not bitching here, just things I have observed over the years.