Movie post
Aug. 15th, 2011 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalI've been doing a fair amount of Netflixing since school ended, and I haven't done a round-up post in a while, so here goes the speed round.
Primer - Based onsnickfic's rec, I thought this sounded really interesting. And it totally was, in a mind-bending sort of way. These two guys invent a time travel machine, but every time they go back in time, it rewrites the timeline, and you probably have to watch it a dozen times in order to figure out what happened in which timeline and in what order.
Anne of Avonlea (which apparently we are calling Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, according to Netflix) - More nostalgia! After I watched Anne of Green Gables a while back, I started craving this one as well. Still as delightful and charming as I remember it. I wish they'd kept following the books instead of that hideous third movie they did, because I would love me some more Anne/Gilbert.
This Film is Not Yet Rated - I actually watched this one for a paper I wrote on the MPAA rating system for my film class. It's a documentary which simultaneously gives an overview of the inequities and other problems with the rating system, while also documenting a private investigator's efforts to uncover the identities of the members on the Ratings Board. It's very interesting, though certainly not unbiased, lol. It helped, I think, to get the pro-MPAA spiel from my professor and then this very anti-MPAA doc to balance it out.
Be prepared for a lot of nudity and explicit sex, since many clips from NC-17 movies are used for comparisons. It's specifically focused on the boundary between R and NC-17, which means the content in question is mainly sexual. I honestly would've liked to see more exploration of ratings for violence, since the boundaries between PG, PG-13, and R are just as murky.
Love and Other Disasters - Okay, so I'm pretty sure I added this to my queue because Catherine Tate, Stephanie Beacham, and Matthew Rhys were in it? Bad, bad movie. Brittany Murphy stars in it, and I'm honestly not sure if her character was originally supposed to be English but raised in America, or if they threw that detail in there because Murphy's British accent was so inconsistent and weird. Anyway, the plot is a total cliche - fashion magazine editor successful in everything except love, meets guy of her dreams but thinks he's gay and tries to fix him up with her gay roommate, wackiness ensues. I think it's actually supposed to be a parody of a rom-com cliche, because some of it really was way too OTT for anyone to have thought it was a good idea, but for me it tipped past parody into just plain annoying. The characters kept making these meta comments about "oh, if we were in a movie, this would happen," which drove me absolutely batty.
The Vicious Kind - Do you love Adam Scott in Parks & Recreation? Well, this is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF THAT. Haha, seriously dark indie flick where Scott plays an emotionally unstable dude who tries to seduce his younger brother's girlfriend (Brittany Snow). The girlfriend's first visit for Thanksgiving is the catalyst to unearth all sorts of secrets in this dysfunctional family. J.K. Simmons also stars as the boys' father, and all of the actors give tremendous performances. But it is DARK - Adam Scott's character is blatantly misogynistic and kind of abusive.
You Again - Uh, the best thing I can say about this movie is that it's not nearly as awful as Kristen Bell's other movie, When in Rome. KBell, your career makes me sad.
The Good Guy - Netflix calls this a romantic comedy, but there isn't much romance and hardly any comedy. Scott Porter stars as a Wall Street up-and-comer who is basically an asshole to everyone, but mostly his girlfriend (Alexis Bledel), and then is shocked when she falls for his much nicer coworker. The problem with having a supremely unlikable character as your POV character is that it's really hard to get invested in the movie. Also, is it just me, or does anyone else find it momentarily confusing whenever they see Scott Porter walking around?
The Man in the Moon - This was Reese Witherspoon's first movie, and damn, I can see why she became famous, because even at 14, she was stellar. She plays Dani, a young girl growing up in 1950s Louisiana who's developed her first crush on her new neighbor. Unfortunately, she has to compete with her older sister for his attention. I LOVED this movie. I was grinning like an idiot at how adorable it was for the first half, and then crying ALL THE TEARS through the second half. (Seriously, OMG, I was NOT expecting it to get that sad! It started out so cute!) Although there's a boy and a love triangle of sorts, the focus is really on the coming-of-age story and the relationship between the sisters.
Primer - Based on
snickfic's rec, I thought this sounded really interesting. And it totally was, in a mind-bending sort of way. These two guys invent a time travel machine, but every time they go back in time, it rewrites the timeline, and you probably have to watch it a dozen times in order to figure out what happened in which timeline and in what order.Anne of Avonlea (which apparently we are calling Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, according to Netflix) - More nostalgia! After I watched Anne of Green Gables a while back, I started craving this one as well. Still as delightful and charming as I remember it. I wish they'd kept following the books instead of that hideous third movie they did, because I would love me some more Anne/Gilbert.
This Film is Not Yet Rated - I actually watched this one for a paper I wrote on the MPAA rating system for my film class. It's a documentary which simultaneously gives an overview of the inequities and other problems with the rating system, while also documenting a private investigator's efforts to uncover the identities of the members on the Ratings Board. It's very interesting, though certainly not unbiased, lol. It helped, I think, to get the pro-MPAA spiel from my professor and then this very anti-MPAA doc to balance it out.
Be prepared for a lot of nudity and explicit sex, since many clips from NC-17 movies are used for comparisons. It's specifically focused on the boundary between R and NC-17, which means the content in question is mainly sexual. I honestly would've liked to see more exploration of ratings for violence, since the boundaries between PG, PG-13, and R are just as murky.
Love and Other Disasters - Okay, so I'm pretty sure I added this to my queue because Catherine Tate, Stephanie Beacham, and Matthew Rhys were in it? Bad, bad movie. Brittany Murphy stars in it, and I'm honestly not sure if her character was originally supposed to be English but raised in America, or if they threw that detail in there because Murphy's British accent was so inconsistent and weird. Anyway, the plot is a total cliche - fashion magazine editor successful in everything except love, meets guy of her dreams but thinks he's gay and tries to fix him up with her gay roommate, wackiness ensues. I think it's actually supposed to be a parody of a rom-com cliche, because some of it really was way too OTT for anyone to have thought it was a good idea, but for me it tipped past parody into just plain annoying. The characters kept making these meta comments about "oh, if we were in a movie, this would happen," which drove me absolutely batty.
The Vicious Kind - Do you love Adam Scott in Parks & Recreation? Well, this is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF THAT. Haha, seriously dark indie flick where Scott plays an emotionally unstable dude who tries to seduce his younger brother's girlfriend (Brittany Snow). The girlfriend's first visit for Thanksgiving is the catalyst to unearth all sorts of secrets in this dysfunctional family. J.K. Simmons also stars as the boys' father, and all of the actors give tremendous performances. But it is DARK - Adam Scott's character is blatantly misogynistic and kind of abusive.
You Again - Uh, the best thing I can say about this movie is that it's not nearly as awful as Kristen Bell's other movie, When in Rome. KBell, your career makes me sad.
The Good Guy - Netflix calls this a romantic comedy, but there isn't much romance and hardly any comedy. Scott Porter stars as a Wall Street up-and-comer who is basically an asshole to everyone, but mostly his girlfriend (Alexis Bledel), and then is shocked when she falls for his much nicer coworker. The problem with having a supremely unlikable character as your POV character is that it's really hard to get invested in the movie. Also, is it just me, or does anyone else find it momentarily confusing whenever they see Scott Porter walking around?
The Man in the Moon - This was Reese Witherspoon's first movie, and damn, I can see why she became famous, because even at 14, she was stellar. She plays Dani, a young girl growing up in 1950s Louisiana who's developed her first crush on her new neighbor. Unfortunately, she has to compete with her older sister for his attention. I LOVED this movie. I was grinning like an idiot at how adorable it was for the first half, and then crying ALL THE TEARS through the second half. (Seriously, OMG, I was NOT expecting it to get that sad! It started out so cute!) Although there's a boy and a love triangle of sorts, the focus is really on the coming-of-age story and the relationship between the sisters.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 03:00 am (UTC)I watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Interesting.
KBell and SMG both seem to have unfortunate movie choices. Which one was You Again? Was Betty White in it?
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 03:12 am (UTC)You Again is the wedding one - KBell's brother is getting married to her high school nemesis, and then her mother discovers that the bride's aunt was her rival in high school. And yes, Betty White was someone's grandmother.
I don't understand how it is that such talented people end up making so many horrible movies.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 03:31 am (UTC)Clearly, you've never seen Speed 2. :) Or New York Minute.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2011 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2011 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2011 09:33 pm (UTC)KBell, being the disbelieving rebel that she is, takes a bunch of coins out of the fountain, and then has five wacky suitors who follow her home from Rome, and she has to give them back their coins to get them to stop obsessing over her. All her suitors team up in order to get KBell to the guy she truly loves, but not before there's all sorts of misunderstandings about whether or not HE is under a spell as well, or if he actually loves her back.
no subject
Date: Aug. 16th, 2011 10:49 pm (UTC)What wins the title of worst movie?
no subject
Date: Aug. 17th, 2011 01:48 am (UTC)It's called "The Lost Samaritan" and I was suckered in because it starred Ian Somerhalder - who, to his credit, seems like he is acting in a completely different movie than everyone else... a much better movie. Alas, everything else was a DISASTER.
Ian is this ordinary dude who comes upon a car accident and pulls a guy out of the wreckage, and then suddenly he is being pursued by these corrupt FBI agents who want to kill him for interfering with their killing of car accident guy. I should note here that all the other actors have European accents (but they're all DIFFERENT European accents) and all the cars have European-style license plates, so I'm assuming it takes place somewhere in Europe - except that the FBI doesn't work outside the US! So I don't even know where this movie is SET.
Anyway, Ian also finds out his wife is cheating on him with his boss, so he goes to a diner and decides to run off with a waitress HE JUST MET. (Because people do that.) So they go back to his house to get his stuff and find that the FBI guys have shot Ian's wife and his boss because they thought she was having sex with Ian, but since she was cheating, they killed the wrong guy. So the killer props the bodies up in bed and TALKS TO THEM while he waits for Ian to come home, scolding them for being cheaters, obviously.
When Ian and his new waitress friend get there, they kill one of the FBI guys and then get the hell out... and that's when I stopped watching.