There will be no sandbox Detrius 2011 thread.

I had about a dozen films btwn those two. Didn't give much of a damn about the mom in Margaret (u know, actress).

I'm sure the kids appreciated all the Chinatown, Leone and Hunter Thompson refs in Rango.

out of the 160+ films in the VV poll why don't I see any repping for Wuthering Heights, Pariah, or Oslo, 31 August? Thought these all got some screenings this year.

Pariah just opened in NYC yesterday. Hear much praise for lead performance.

Finally saw Cerified Copy, which I liked a great deal in spite of its Marienbad-La Notte flimflammery. I realized that I wish Juliette Binoche would film a Before Sunrise-esque walking-and-talking film every year. Like I said upthread, this actress is getting more and more fascinating to watch.

wd slap you for invoking Bored Sunrise!

the 'flimflammery' makes the movie, if it doesn't let it touch A Voyage in Italy.

I mean, I think the flimflammery works but the kind of leap of faith of which second viewings are made.

*it's the kind of

'certified copy' is p corny looking but its also really rad

13 assassins was a pointless testosterone blahblahblah, i might actually prefer miike when he's doing torture porn rather than war porn. i don't have a history with samurai movies though.

and to completely kill my credibility, the more i think about war horse the more i realize it's quite a good WW1 movie, conceptually at least.

I want to watch it but I'm not sure I can endure two-hours-plus of equine porn.

i actually really like the idea of War Horse, though i know nothing of the source material. i am kinda afraid to see it. stuff like Au Hasard Balthazar or Umberto D can make me emotional just thinking about them. it's pathetic.

I didn't much like the idea or scenario for War Horse at all, really. It's 100 percent execution.

Really enjoyed Tuesday, After Christmas. The trick to making an asshole interesting is make him seem calm and rational.

alfred and ryan: it is really a lot better when you look at the horse as nothing more than a tool. spielberg actually makes very few attempts to make you care about it as a 'character'; it really just serves as an unwitting tour guide through devastation-of-war vignettes. dissimilar to au hasard balthazar in that way imo.

I'm irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen. PETA sucks too.

The trick to making an asshole interesting is make him seem calm and rational

Didn't see any assholes in this film.

we saw it for jew christmas, and my mom who is a decades-long veg/animal rights freak (who would possibly disown me if she ever learned i eat meat) was seriously traumatized for at least an hour afterward. she said "i didn't care about the fucking horse, it was everything else." a movie about WW1 shouldn't seek to inspire anything less than that sentiment.

I'm irritated when ppl get weepy about a fucking horse when there are scores of human corpses onscreen

YES, this. I keep saying this to people and they think it's strange.

im not sure they're mutually exclusive. besides, though i haven't seen this, the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it's like a stand in human, who can feel pain and fear and not have any larger understanding as to why. it's certainly a perfect representation of what happened to people in world war 1.

Excepting that I bet most people knew "why."

sure, though there are varying levels of "why" i guess. anyway, i'll shut up until i see it.

the whole point of an animal protagonist is to basically elicit the pathetic fallacy. it's like a stand in human

yes -- but it didn't work here.

Still better than pretty much everything else that's gonna get a BP nod.

not convinced that it will or that The Tree of Life won't.

just watched My Snooze with Marilyn. Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

hey Branagh, yer way more lumpyfaced than Olivier.

Branaugh was the only thing that got me through that movie. Aside from the gofer's pillowy lips.

AMPAS likes war movies (e.g. the only Malick movie to get a BP nod so far).

wd pay to see Branagh-as-Larry gay movie, but who wd play Danny Kaye?

Larry the Cable Guy

Branagh was awful.

Estimated % of its viewers who will ever see The Prince and the Showgirl?

Bless them!

The Prince and the Showgirl is as tin-eared as this thing, at least.

I guess there will be a wave of I-spooned-with-a-legend-during-a-forgettable-movie-shoot memoirs now.

are you trying to cast the Michelle Williams-Heath Ledger biopic now?

The Artist was cute

like a dead kitten.

naw it was kinda charming, but Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a much more engaging champion for the cause of vocal chords.

TTSS is not the best movie to watch with a buzz. I don't know what the hell just happened in that one.

Let's hope Trollhunter is more my speed.

got my hands on UK horror-thriller Kill List; a little too familiar in some ways (the climax splits the difference between a couple of genre touchstones), but damn if that last 20 minutes didn't give me heart palpitations.

― Simon H., Thursday, 29 December 2011 04:01 (2 days ago) Bookmark

Cannot understand the praise this is getting. I thought it completely incoherent. Obviously everything wasn't meant to spelled out but the various twists and tonal shifts just didn't add up to anything, and for all the shocking content i never once felt scared or engaged beyond a sort of mild curiosity as to how (and why) this thing got made.

i loved TTSS despite being lost myself (especially in the last 10 minutes or so) but when i read the wikipedia description of the plot it all seemed pretty straightforward. this leads me to think that part of the brilliance of the movie is that it's able to so strongly suggest that something else is happening other than the explicit plot. im not exactly putting that right, but there's definitely a sense that there's some hidden depth to it.

anyway, i really liked it a lot. reminded me of Zodiac in that it's a kind of 70s style movie with little to no action that feels very lived in. i cant wait to watch it again.

My feeling regarding TTSS is that Alfredson gives you roughly the minimum visual information needed to piece together the plot specifics, but not much more. I appreciate that very much,

re: Kill List; it basically winds up as a 21st. cent. Wicker Man rehash, but that's still one more idea than most movies of its ilk, and I found the climax well-rendered.

TTSS felt like it was throwing information (exposition, maybe) at you early on, but it all came together really clearly for me. I love that the moment at the end with Strong and Firth had a lot of heft to it because of seeing a polaroid earlier.

Heh, Shame in stark contrast to TTSS in that nothing is left unclear at all. What a rotten movie. One and a half pretty great performances totally wasted.

And bear in mind, I hate sex a whole lot.

A Separation was pretty tremendous. I guess that disqualifies it from winning the Oscar then.

And now I've just realized that it was Ebert's #1 movie of the year, so it'll probably be roundly despised around here.

More ire will and should be directed at his #2.

I was planning to see it tomorrow, though I'm not looking forward to it.

fuck this TTSS, and Alfredson come to think of it. He's been both outremade and pulled off a superfluous rehash.

some people seem to think A Separation is the first really good Iranian film ever (ie, troglodyte blogger Jeff Wells).