The "last movie I saw" thread

[Topper]

The Imitation Game about the Turing effort to decode the Enigma. Sherlock's Benedict gives anOscar performance.

[Katy Lied]

Thanks for the suggestion, Topsy. I have a roomful of books on Turing, and Enigma and coding and decoding (the books by David Khan are the most accessible). Pair that with my crush on Cumberbatch and that spells great entertainment for me.

And sheesh, no one has written a review for American Sniper yet?

[Moliere]

The "last movie I saw" thread

And sheesh, no one has written a review for American Sniper yet?

I want to see American sniper but might wait until it's out on torrent. It looks good, but also looks like The Hurt Locker with diffusing bombs being replaced by sniping.

We are heading out in a couple hours to see Into the Woods with the entire family. I'm nervous the 5 year old will be too scared.

[jay santos]

Under the Skin

Can't say I understood everything about it, but I liked it in that "enjoyed it for the experience" sort of way. Reminded me to various degrees of recent stuff like The Tree of Life/Holy Motors/Upstream color, and if you like those movies, I can't promise you'll like this, but you'll at least make it through it. ha. But at any rate, similar sort of experimental film that is concerned less with plot and character than theme. Though I will say I found the themes even more opaque than something like the Tree of Life.

Apparently it is based on a book, but the book is much more deliberate in spelling out what is going on. I listened to an interview with the director yesterday, and he said that when he started writing the screenplay, he realized he was more interested in making a movie about one particular character than the book itself. So he kind of used the book more as an inspiration than anything and is intentionally more vague about the details of what is going on.

Also, I always envisioned seeing ScarJo naked as being more spectacular. Too bad they didn't make this movie 7 years ago.

Saw this. I didn't love it but didn't hate it. Maybe a 3 out of 5. I read up after watching to figure out what was going on in some scenes. After reading up, I thought "ah ok that's pretty cool." And I appreciated the film more, but I also wanted to immediately kick the director in the nuts. I get that the director meant it to be vague and unique and didn't want a typical screenplay. But I felt like he could have added three or four sentences of exposition scattered about the film that would completely change the viewing experience from "WTF is this?" to "I don't understand everything but I kinda get it and this is cool."

[Commando]

Saw The Interview. Like most, my expectations were pretty low, but it was a fun watch. Obviously not family viewing, but not the worst you've ever seen from this duo, content-wise. James Franco's character was like nails on a chalk board for a minute there at first with how maddeningly stupid he is, but it does play a bit to advance the goals of the plot and some of the more effective comedic devices, so no harm no foul. Some seriously funny moments with Franco and Kim Jong Un. I wasn't really even looking forward to seeing this, but I ended up liking this wayy more than I ever thought I would.

[UVACoug]

The Imitation Game about the Turing effort to decode the Enigma. Sherlock's Benedict gives anOscar performance.

Saw The Imitation Game too yesterday. Absolutely loved it. I was kind of devastated by the ending. Cumberbatch was terrific. It made me want to learn a lot more about Turing.

[UVACoug]

Saw The Interview. Like most, my expectations were pretty low, but it was a fun watch. Obviously not family viewing, but not the worst you've ever seen from this duo, content-wise. James Franco's character was like nails on a chalk board for a minute there at first with how maddeningly stupid he is, but it does play a bit to advance the goals of the plot and some of the more effective comedic devices, so no harm no foul. Some seriously funny moments with Franco and Kim Jong Un. I wasn't really even looking forward to seeing this, but I ended up liking this wayy more than I ever thought I would.

I thought The Interview was thoroughly mediocre. I certainly laughed at loud several times, but it also seemed to drag a bit and there were really no surprises in the film at all. A very formulaic buddy comedy with some funny jokes, but also several unfunny jokes. I'm glad at watched it streaming at home. Probably not worth the effort to try to find a theater to watch it at.

[Armenag]

Anyone seen The One I Love? Saw it last week and enjoyed it. Sort of a relationship movie with some thriller elements. Probably better to not know a ton about the plot before seeing it. Well written and acted.

[TripletDaddy]

has anyone reviewed the latest Hobbit? if not, it was pretty bad. Ive loved the other 5 LOTR movies but this one was definitely the weakest of the 6. all the blatant attempts to invent content/storylines and stretch the Hobbit into 3 movies became painfully obvious in this final installment.

[Commando]

has anyone reviewed the latest Hobbit? if not, it was pretty bad. Ive loved the other 5 LOTR movies but this one was definitely the weakest of the 6. all the blatant attempts to invent content/storylines and stretch the Hobbit into 3 movies became painfully obvious in this final installment.

Oh yeah- I saw it a few days ago. My main emotion was annoyance and a little bit of anger. If I am jonesing for an Orc/Elf/Dwarf fight, well there is a whole superfluously long LOTR trilogy to get my fill of that crap. I know that was the point of the battle of 5 armies in the end, but really you could have summed that part up in 15-20 minutes and not lost any epic qualities you were going for. I genuinely couldn't remember the point of the whole Hobbit story, or why Bilbo was there by the end of the third movie. And then that elf romance with Legolas? GTFO. I liked the elements that were clearly from the book (I almost typed books ) like Bowman and some of that stuff, but wow did they blow this one. My thought leaving the theatre is that I can't wait for somebody to edit the trilogy into a single coherent 3 hours that actually just follows the book.

I also wished they would have just stuck with the Hobbit vernacular, such as Goblins, Witch King, etc. Ten years ago when I was excited for a Hobbit movie, I wished they had done it on HBO or something via a ten installment series - a chapter per episode- like Band of Brothers. Everything could have been richly covered without making up crap to fill the box office need for a romance and elves, blah blah blah. Let's put Christ back in Christmas and Bilbo Baggins back in the Hobbit!

[bluegoose]

has anyone reviewed the latest Hobbit? if not, it was pretty bad. Ive loved the other 5 LOTR movies but this one was definitely the weakest of the 6. all the blatant attempts to invent content/storylines and stretch the Hobbit into 3 movies became painfully obvious in this final installment.

I saw it last weekend with the kids. They loved it, I tolerated it. Barely.

Honestly, I couldn't really get into it as I was so distracted by the awfulness of the 3D/XD features. So poorly done. The 3d didn't add anything to the movie and the soap opera effect of the high frame rate was nauseating for me.

Not sure if standard def would have changed it much though, as this movie was so many levels below the previous ones in the series it is almost unrecognizable.

Too bad it went out on such a sour note.

[Blueintheface]

Yeah the series definitely limped across the finish line.

[TripletDaddy]

Oh yeah- I saw it a few days ago. My main emotion was annoyance and a little bit of anger. If I am jonesing for an Orc/Elf/Dwarf fight, well there is a whole superfluously long LOTR trilogy to get my fill of that crap. I know that was the point of the battle of 5 armies in the end, but really you could have summed that part up in 15-20 minutes and not lost any epic qualities you were going for. I genuinely couldn't remember the point of the whole Hobbit story, or why Bilbo was there by the end of the third movie. And then that elf romance with Legolas? GTFO. I liked the elements that were clearly from the book (I almost typed books ) like Bowman and some of that stuff, but wow did they blow this one. My thought leaving the theatre is that I can't wait for somebody to edit the trilogy into a single coherent 3 hours that actually just follows the book.

I also wished they would have just stuck with the Hobbit vernacular, such as Goblins, Witch King, etc. Ten years ago when I was excited for a Hobbit movie, I wished they had done it on HBO or something via a ten installment series - a chapter per episode- like Band of Brothers. Everything could have been richly covered without making up crap to fill the box office need for a romance and elves, blah blah blah. Let's put Christ back in Christmas and Bilbo Baggins back in the Hobbit!

Speaking of awfulness, what happened to Albert? Last we saw he was cowering around town in drag, running off to somewhere. Where did he go? Was he killed? Did he keep his gold coins? I guess we will never know. Great lesson in character development: set up antagonist for obvious death/come uppance, forget to write an ending for that character.

I would have liked that fight between thorin and the white Orc to have lasted a little longer...maybe 20 or so minutes more.

Also, near the very end of the movie we are stuck with Legolas and have to do something with him. Since he isn't part of the actual Hobbit story, I guess they tried to get clever and tie in both trilogies by sending Legolas off to find Strider.. At that point in time, Bilbo is the young Bilbo that is returning home to The Shire to find his belongings being auctioned off. when Legolas finds Strider in LOTR, Bilbo is already very old and Strider is not. So either Legolas took decades to find Strider and Strider didn't age or Bilbo aged very quickly.

Finally, Legolas jumping from falling brick to falling brick was very Nintendo. Would have been cool to have some MIDI music playing during that scene.

[bluegoose]

Speaking of awfulness, what happened to Albert? Last we saw he was cowering around town in drag, running off to somewhere. Where did he go? Was he killed? Did he keep his gold coins? I guess we will never know. Great lesson in character development: set up antagonist for obvious death/come uppance, forget to write an ending for that character.

I would have liked that fight between thorin and the white Orc to have lasted a little longer...maybe 20 or so minutes more.

Also, near the very end of the movie we are stuck with Legolas and have to do something with him. Since he isn't part of the actual Hobbit story, I guess they tried to get clever and tie in both trilogies by sending Legolas off to find Strider.. At that point in time, Bilbo is the young Bilbo that is returning home to The Shire to find his belongings being auctioned off. when Legolas finds Strider in LOTR, Bilbo is already very old and Strider is not. So either Legolas took decades to find Strider and Strider didn't age or Bilbo aged very quickly.

Finally, Legolas jumping from falling brick to falling brick was very Nintendo. Would have been cool to have some MIDI music playing during that scene.

After consulting my 14 and 11 years olds I've learned that there are about 80 years in between the end of the hobbit and the beginning of LOTR. Bilbo celebrates his 11teenth birthday (111) putting him at about 30 during the hobbit. 111 was very old for a hobbit, second oldest hobbit ever, made possible by his regular use of the ring, which also allowed Gollum to live 500+ years in the cave.

Despite his youthful appearance Strider tells eowyn that he is somewhere between 80-90 years old ( I want to say 84 maybe???) just before the battle of helms deep in the two towers. There are roughly 7 years total in the LOTR books. Putting it all together strider would have been somewhere between 4-10 years old when legolas went to find him.

Not a perfect fit , but they seem to covered their chronology bases fairly well.

You bring up a fine point with Albert. Not even the little bluegeese can answer that one for us and agree with you. I can never be satisfied with the series until I find out his fate.

[TripletDaddy]

After consulting my 14 and 11 years olds I've learned that there are about 80 years in between the end of the hobbit and the beginning of LOTR. Bilbo celebrates his 11teenth birthday (111) putting him at about 30 during the hobbit. 111 was very old for a hobbit, second oldest hobbit ever, made possible by his regular use of the ring, which also allowed Gollum to live 500+ years in the cave.

Despite his youthful appearance Strider tells eowyn that he is somewhere between 80-90 years old ( I want to say 84 maybe???) just before the battle of helms deep in the two towers. There are roughly 7 years total in the LOTR books. Putting it all together strider would have been somewhere between 4-10 years old when legolas went to find him.

Not a perfect fit , but they seem to covered their chronology bases fairly well.

You bring up a fine point with Albert. Not even the little bluegeese can answer that one for us and agree with you. I can never be satisfied with the series until I find out his fate.

aragorn was living in hiding under the protection of the elves in rivendell until he was maybe 30. He wasn't even known as strider until around that age. So if Legolas was to find strider at the age of 4-10, it would have had to be in rivedell, which would be impossible since Legolas himself was in exile from the elves and Aragorn would also already have to have been made a Ranger at that age. Fail!