Rate That Movie 2!: Electric Boogaloo

[Chienfantome]

Just got back from an advance screening of A Dangerous Method, and I was disappointed. The whole film just felt so vain. The subject was interesting but Cronenberg never manages to make it fascinating. It's like a ping pong game, with the ball going from one end of the table to the other, and you wonder what's the point. Keira Knightley got on my nerve from her very first appearance, she acts too much. And then there's the screenplay problems, with too much ellipses which completely dilutes the sense of time. At the same tim I can't say I didn't like the film. Mortensen and Cassel are funny. Fassbender is alright, but I had seen Shame a couple of days ago, and his performance in McQueen's film is much more mesmerizing. I think A Dangerous Method is just... unremarkable. 5/10

What was great though was the presence at the screening of producers Jeremy Thomas and Martin Katz, and of Vincent Cassel, Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg.

[Buscemi]

I did think Hugo was a bit preachy at times with the film preservation thing but in the end, this is one of the few times that an author tract works. We do need to preserve our art and our history and what Scorsese does at The Film Foundation is important. He has also helped many films get out of obscurity (for example, no one would remember Powell and Pressburger's films if not for Scorsese's enthusiasm for their works).

Also, the elements with Melies are based on fact. Though Hugo Cabret is a fictional character, nearly everything else depicted in the film really did happen to him. Without film preservation and the uncovering of his lost films, Melies would have been forgotten.

[numbersix]

Oh no, I totally value the preservation of film. But when it literally interferes with storytelling, and is being pushed in such a heavy-handed manner, I can't help but feel far too manipulated (especially when some sections of the script are so poor) to really appreciate the film itself.

[Ron Burgundy]

Well thats bad news for A Dangerous Method. I was actually kinda exicted about this film when i first heard about mostly due to the director and actors involved. BUT then i saw the trailer the other day, and i lost almost all motivation to see it, now chien has managed to king hit this movie right out of my list.

Carnage though, i might just see tonight

[englishozzy]

I was also looking forward to watching A Dangerous Method but now I'm not so sure. It looked promising on paper with the likes of Mortensen and Fassbender, and although i agree with Chien's comments about Kiera's tendency to over-act, i was hopeful this would of been one of her better films.

[Ron Burgundy]

Well Keira Knightley, i certainly dont like her acting, or her frail skinny body, but she did do some good stuff in Pirates otc1, The Duchess and Atonement. But then you see this trailer for a Dangerous Method and it just seems like the focus is on the romance love triangle between her Freud and Jung. With cronenberg attached i thought we would at least get to explore more psychoanalysis

[Chienfantome]

Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender are the two leads in A dangerous Method. The film is focused on their relationship more than on the relationship between Jung and Freud, and that's one of the main reasons the film feels flat. Jung and Freud relationship is too quickly handled for my own taste, while it should have been the heart of the film.
Sometimes in the film Knightley is good actually. But when she overacts, it's highly irritating.
Sorry to temper your will to see the film. I was with 4 friends at the screening, and none of us liked the film.

[numbersix]

Moneyball: 6/10

A watchable movie, and I have to give major kudos to director Bennett Miller for how he handled the script. Sorkin has a habit of writing all his characters' dialogue in the exact same way, so they all sound like the same person. But it worked in Moneyball not only because everyone is in the world of baseball and hence use the same terminology, but also because Miller got naturalistic performances out of the characters (like the interaction between Pitt's Billy Beane and his daughter).

But, I don't believe those who say you don't need to know baseball to fully appreciate this movie. Sure, you can get what they're doing, but I felt the film never really bothered to address the love of baseball (or sport in general) in any meaningful way (I also felt this about Black Swan). Instead it just reduced sport to merely business, a matter of winning and losing so to speak, though the last scene was good. I also felt that it could have delved a bit more into the "method" employed by Beane, only because by reducing players to stats you are cutting out some really important info (e.g. if they have an injury, if they have deep psychological problems). The film/method claims that this is never a problem but I would have liked to have seen more a struggle from the "outcast" players and see Beane try to manage that more. I guess that would have been drifting into more familiar sports movie territory but the idea of reducing something human-based to a statistical method just seems too reductive, and the film didn't entirely address this for me.

The film was also a tad sentimental at times, but that's sports for ya. Performances were solid but not exceptional. Pitt was okay but he's been better and he doesn't come close to the brilliance of Michael Shannon in Take Shelter. Jonah Hill was okay but only really because he was playing against his type. Overall, though, better than expected.

[Ron Burgundy]

Carnage at 69% on RT, what does that mean, more so for Polanski.

Dam, yet another good prospect (Moneyball) thwarted! 6-10 for u is prob a 7 for me though so not entirely, but chiens 5-10 for method does not bode well with me, i think ill wait for both to come out on....um...dvd

[Ron Burgundy]

Oh, and i watched 3 films from 2011 in the past couple of days while i was nursing my snowboarding injury(ies).

Cowboys and Aliens
Definately not as bad as i thought it would be, while there are flaws it is certainly a fun movie. Suspension of disbelief is one thing that fairly important for u to like this movie. Daniel Craig did well, while Harrison Ford actually had a half decent role, action too, first good appearance for him since....hmmm....The Fugitve??? No wait, Air Force One, still thats a long time. Not even mentioning that film that made 300+ which was a sequel. Crap
6.5-10

The Devils Double
Dominic Cooper will be big, it just might take some time. Talented actor he is. At first i wasnt sure about the whole premise, like is this fictional or was it partly real? But i did enjoy it and you also get a strong hatred for the 'devil' of the movie, which compels u even more to root for the double. i recommend this to those who havent seen it, and like a bit of character exploration.
7.5-10

The Guard
I had heard so much about this movie before seeing it, and more or less they are right, apart from one thing. While the relationship between Gleeson and Cheadle is entertaining to watch, they dont actually spend much time together on the screen. But its a great debut from the director and there a numerous familar faces including Mark Strong. The final 30mins are great.
7.5-10

[W]

On the Blu Ray of The Devil's Double it had an interview about the story and another with the actual guy. They pretty much said most of the stuff in the movie never actually happened. Their excuse was "Well, he was really a bad guy and was crazy like that." I understand dramatization something that really happened, but this seemed like "Let's throw this in there because it's sure to make people hate him more. And this, and this, and this." It all felt forced and flat to me. Passable as a one time watch, but flat.

And I think to "fully appreciate" Moneyball, you have to know about baseball. You can get what's going on and everything, but isn't that the same for any movie based on anything? Saving Private Ryan is one of my favorite movies, but don't you think that WWII vets get something more (or less) out of it? Baseball fans SHOULD get more out of Moneyball than people that've never seen a game. That makes sense to me...

[numbersix]

Yep, good point, but while I feel most movies about any subject that's not immediately accessible will tend to look at that subject from an outsiders point of view, some film-makers can get so involved that they miss the general audience. Moneyball came close to risking that by not really showing us the beauty of the sport (as I said, Black Swan makes a similar mistake) and why everything we see is important in the first place.

[becs]

Hugo - 5/10
Admittedly, this may be a knee-jerk reaction, but the film ultimately felt like a 2 hour advertisement for Scorsese;s cinema resoration organisation The Film Foundation. It's as agenda-pushing as any Christian Films (Corageous, Fireproof, etc). Which would be fine (hey, he's preaching to a convert here) but I felt his mastabatory fascination with the history and mechnaisms of cinema booged the film down, and ultimately sacrificed character and a coherent theme. It's also ironic considering it was shot on Digital 3D, and the overuse of what will be seen as the fad of the last decade, teal and orange grading.

Thematically it's a bit all over the place (Scorsese has been guilty of this before, and it's no coincidence it was with The Aviator, yet another film about the history of cinema). The world of Hugo and the world of George never quite cohere, and at key moments we get very leading and unnatural speeches that are meant to convince us about characters and motivations to bridge their stories, but never quite ring true because we're never shown it enough. And then there's two sub-plots that never quite work with the main film except for the ultimate feel-good nature that the film forces upon us. There's also a good few plot holes too, possibly cut in a clunky adaptation, I'm not sure.

On the plus side, a film about the wonder of cinema's origins is quite a subversive element for a children's film. I wonder what kids make of it? And even though Chloe Moretz totally over-acted, Ben Kingsley and Sasha Baron Cohen were both superb in very different ways. The lead was at times good, but the script often felt too uncomfortable.

The world Scorsese creates does feel fun and dynamic. I'm not sure if it was the intention but the 3D worked in a sort of antiquated way - it felt like a pop-up book at first. Some sequences glide beautifully, the camera floating without drawing too much attention to itself. But just like it shows us a lot of clips of classic silent movies, and not the bones of the stories that drew audiences in, this film too is great at wowing us with its individual sequences but never quite working together.

While it may certainly align with his views... again.. this was a book, the story told and the views therein follow almost exactly what is in the book. In terms of the Melies history, I saw no differences from what was in the book.

As far as the "pop up book" feel.. I would say that the book may not have been exactly that, but the illustrations vs the film were so very similar it's a bit amazing, I understand what you are saying, I just believe the "cut out" layering was often intentional to mimic the feel of the book's artwork. (http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com ... _intro.htm click the link at the bottom of the page)

[NSpan]

I agree with Six: Black Swan did not address the love of baseball.

[numbersix]

I agree with Six: Black Swan did not address the love of baseball.