The "last movie I saw" thread

[MarkGrace]

Just my speculation as to why Clooney was the only name actor in the flick. In L.A. it's being released mostly in the art houses.

EDIT: Another possibility is that Clooney wanted to be in the movie and asked to be in it. That's what Geraldine Page did with "The Trip to Bountiful." She got paid scale for her work and won Best Actress.

Or the other possibility is that's just how Payne chose to cast it. He's a very well respected director and people want to work with him when he does films. He's worked with a lot of big names, and I'm sure he could have filled out the cast with more actors of that variety. For example, Amanda Seyfried reportedly really wanted the role of the older daughter, and he passed on her.

[LA Ute]

Or the other possibility is that's just how Payne chose to cast it. He's a very well respected director and people want to work with him when he does films. He's worked with a lot of big names, and I'm sure he could have filled out the cast with more actors of that variety. For example, Amanda Seyfried reportedly really wanted the role of the older daughter, and he passed on her.

The actor who got that role nailed it, IMO. Seyfried would have been a mistake. My guess (and that's all it is) is that Clooney wanted his role. It's perfect for helping him to continue establishing himself as a serious actor.

[MarkGrace]

The actor who got that role nailed it, IMO. Seyfried would have been a mistake. My guess (and that's all it is) is that Clooney wanted his role. It's perfect for helping him to continue establishing himself as a serious actor.

Yeah, she's getting a lot of buzz for a best supporting nom as well.

I'm sure Clooney wanted that role -- it's a great role and he loves Payne. I saw an interview the other day where he said he basically begged Payne to make more movies.

EW did a recent article comparing Clooney's career metamorphosis to that of Paul Newman.
http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/11/21/ge...ewman-verdict/

[Topper]

The Devils' Double. It puts an interesting face on Uday Hussein, Sadam Hussein's insane son.

The man was pulled from the Iran war and forced to act as his second, while his family was told he died in the war. In such capacity, he was exposed to the insanity of Uday, who was crazy, self-absorbed and evil. He had the habit of pulling fourteen year old girls off the street, raping and killing them only to have his handlers dump the bodies along a desolate roadside. He trumped himself by killing his father's friend a party by shooting him and disemboweling him on the buffet table and by taking a new bride at her wedding, raping her, only to witness her throw herself off a ledge in front of the wedding party. Assuming the picture is accurate, Uday is one insane person serving a long time in hell.

[Green Lantern]

My wife and I saw The Descendants last week and were unimpressed. I know it's getting a lot of love on the board and amongst critics but Alexander Payne's work continues to leave me cold. I didn't dislike this movie the way I did Sideways, but I still found the film to be rather unremarkable, with a pretty predictable emotional arc and a couple strong lead performances surrounded by a lot of weak supporting turns. I know I'm the outlier on this one, as the packed house was laughing like they were at a Judd Apatow flick, but this one just didn't speak to me. Maybe I've just seen this general story too many times. Payne does have a nice eye for detail but I don't think his writing is nearly as sharp here as it was back on Election (another movie I don't have any particular fondness for.)

Any praise I have for this movie I reserve for Shailene Woodley and Clooney. I saw that someone above pointed out the article comparing Clooney to Newman which is something I've noticed as well. I think Brad Pitt is working on it as well. Both Pitt and Clooney, like Newman and Redford before them, are just ridiculously good-looking and charismatic performers who are also interested in actually creating quality bodies of work. They are also reaching the points in their careers where they are capable of doing really interesting, understated work that has genuine emotion and truth to it. I know people don't often win awards for unshowy performances like Clooney's in this one and Pitt's in Moneyball, but I find them far more interesting than big give-me-an-Oscar stuff like Leo in J. Edgar.

[lambdacoug]

Borat

Funny as hell.

[MarkGrace]

My wife and I saw The Descendants last week and were unimpressed. I know it's getting a lot of love on the board and amongst critics but Alexander Payne's work continues to leave me cold. I didn't dislike this movie the way I did Sideways, but I still found the film to be rather unremarkable, with a pretty predictable emotional arc and a couple strong lead performances surrounded by a lot of weak supporting turns. I know I'm the outlier on this one, as the packed house was laughing like they were at a Judd Apatow flick, but this one just didn't speak to me. Maybe I've just seen this general story too many times. Payne does have a nice eye for detail but I don't think his writing is nearly as sharp here as it was back on Election (another movie I don't have any particular fondness for.)

Any praise I have for this movie I reserve for Shailene Woodley and Clooney. I saw that someone above pointed out the article comparing Clooney to Newman which is something I've noticed as well. I think Brad Pitt is working on it as well. Both Pitt and Clooney, like Newman and Redford before them, are just ridiculously good-looking and charismatic performers who are also interested in actually creating quality bodies of work. They are also reaching the points in their careers where they are capable of doing really interesting, understated work that has genuine emotion and truth to it. I know people don't often win awards for unshowy performances like Clooney's in this one and Pitt's in Moneyball, but I find them far more interesting than big give-me-an-Oscar stuff like Leo in J. Edgar.

I must need an emotional recalibration. I spent my weekend trying not to cry in movies you found "cold" and Levin found "emotionally inert." Ok, I'm going to agree with you on a thing a two, but mostly disagree.

As is always my quibble when people use this argument, I don't understand the "predictable" stuff. I know I've said this a million times, but I don't think it's a movie's job to be unpredictable. I agree with you that the movie's arc is mostly predictable -- if you've seen the trailer, I think you know where this thing is headed. That said, I thought there were some unexpected wrinkles along the way that gave this film some real honesty. For example...

Spoiler for Sorry, spoilers:

How great was it when you find out why the daughter chose the boy to be with her the whole time? When you meet the kid, you have him pegged as the dolt the director is going to use in the movie for levity. To me it was totally unexpected when it's revealed that the girl has chosen him because he's also dealing with the loss of a parent -- and it's delivered so well in that late-night scene between the boy and Clooney. The kid quickly turns from someone you had pegged as a movie stereotype into a real character, and I love the way they misled you into believing he was one thing in the beginning.

I also really appreciated that moment when you find out that Lillard's character wasn't in love with the wife. I was completely expecting the typical "yes we were in love, yes we were going to leave our families and run away together, etc." And the Clooney character was expecting that as well, and was really turned on his head when it ended up not being the case. I love the way you could see that he was almost hurt that this man didn't love his wife.

Lillard's wife also delivered some unexpected moments. First, the kiss with Clooney. I know that was done at least in part for comedic effect, but I appreciated how much it repesented Clooney trying to get back at Lillard in a way that was more consistent with his character than going out and cheating with someone in the conventional sense (which is usually what you see). I also found her visit to the hospital at the end to be a complete surprise and a very touching moment.

IDK, I guess I just found a lot of unconvential twists in what what was broadly a conventional storyline. I even really just loved this idea of finding out about someone else cheating in a scenario where you can't confront them. What happens when you have to deal with all those emotions by yourself? When you can't hash them out with the other person in the relationship? How do you do it? Who do you go to? I even found that moment at the end between the father-in-law and Clooney to be pretty unexpected where Clooney says "he could have done more." He spends the whole movie getting berated by the FIL, and you keep anticipating the moment where he's going to tell the FIL what was going on. But he never does, in part to preserve her memory for the FIL, but in part because he's come to the realization that most people do in these types of scenarios that he's also to blame. But he doesn't learn that directly from the wife, as is typical, but rather by proxy through the people and events around the two of them. Really liked that. Also thought they did a great job of making the wife feel like such a real character to the story, even though she's just lying there in a hospital the whole time -- I felt like I had a great sense of who she was.

My last spoiler comment here is on the B plot of the land sale. It is entirely predictable and cliche that he would choose not to sell the land in the end. However, I completely went with that moment because it rang so true. In many ways, I am The Descendants. My family doesn't own a ton of land in Hawai'i, but I have definitely profited on what at times can feel like a technicality. The state of Hawi'i tracks ethnicity because of its importance in certain programs there. My mom's reads Portuguese, Hawaiian and Chinese. But like most people from the islands, she's mostly unaware of what percentages of each of these constitutes her background. Her mom is 100% Portuguese and her father was a mix of the other stuff. My dad is 100% Haole. For all intents and purposes, I'm 3/4 white by make up, and look nothing but extremely white in appearance. However, in college I was on a diversity scholarship and partcipated as part of the Asian/Poly student council, and I was even awarded a diversity scholarship going into law school. In a lot of ways I was always uncomfortable with this stuff because there's nothing to really distinguish me from other white kids that didn't have access to similar programs (my siblings, on the other hand, did not feel uncomfortable with this stuff simply because their appearance was not as pasty as mine). But to be considered "Hawaiian," you don't need a specific percentage of ethnicity -- you need only have an ancestor that predates Western contact. So that means my kids, who will have almost nothing of Hawaiian blood (my wife is half latina, half white), will still have access to all the Kamehameha programs, scholarships for Hawaiian kids, etc. It's a weird spot to be in, so I felt like I related to the Clooney character, who was clearly portrayed as being uncomfortable with all this land and how it came into his family, and his difficulty wrangling with the idea of profiting from it immensely.

Where I will agree with you is with respect to some of the supporting actors. Many of them were just bad, but in terms of some of the locals, I appreciated their inclusion in the movie. I mean, they can try and teach Clooney to pronounce Hawai'i the right way, but he just can't get it quite nail it, you know? Also some odd decisions with Matthew Lillard and Rob Huebel. It's just hard to take these guys seriously in roles like this when you're familiar with their other work. And then of course you get Laird Hamilton, who can't act at all, but putting him in there is certainly another local nod that I thought was kind of fun.

I also had difficulty with such a segregated view of Hawai'i. Don't get me wrong, Hawai'i can be plenty segregated, but you have that scene at the end with the huge family and in all those generations being on the islands there's not one local looking person in the family? Not one asian? Nothing even resembling mixed blood? Or at the scene with all the people gathered at the Clooney home, they don't have one person even approaching brown as a friend? I know these ethnic enclaves, particularly white, are known for not mixing, but that seemed a little extreme. I've thought about this a bit and figured it must have been a conscious decision on Payne's part to really create the world he was going for. These families definitely exist -- that's Punahou for you -- and I think he just decided to go to a bit of an extreme to create a certain world. It's funny because there was a lady that came from a family like this that lived at the end of our street growing up in Utah. Father was a wealthy haole businessman, she attended Punahou, grew up her entire life on Oahu, and didn't know shit about Hawai'i. When Clooney says "we can't even speak pigeon, let alone Hawaiian," that is exactly this lady, and my mom absolutely couldn't stand her. (btw, both my wife and I had a full-on laugh-out-loud moment at that line, and we were the only two in the entire theater laughing -- kind of awkward for us.)

Anyway, I'm doing some seriously jumbled rambling and feel like I could go on forever right now. I called my dad after the movie and we talked for a good while about some of this stuff and he had some interesting things to say. Anyway, I'll just end with a couple random thoughts that came to mind: I really loved the underwater shot with the daughter. To me that was very unique and just kind of a punch to the gut that was exceptionally well delivered. I also love the way the movie looks at loss generationally. The kids losing their mom, their dad losing his wife, and their grandpa losing both his wife and his daughter. Really well done if you ask me. Also really appreciated the "unromanticized" take on Hawai'i. Every other movie portrays it as paradise, and you often hear mainlanders talk about how much they'd love to live there, like life everyday is a vacation. But it's a regular place, with regular people who have regular problems, and I think that's pretty well conveyed here, especially with Clooney's monologue at the beginning.

[Green Lantern]

I must need an emotional recalibration. I spent my weekend trying not to cry in movies you found "cold" and Levin found "emotionally inert." Ok, I'm going to agree with you on a thing a two, but mostly disagree.

As is always my quibble when people use this argument, I don't understand the "predictable" stuff. I know I've said this a million times, but I don't think it's a movie's job to be unpredictable. I agree with you that the movie's arc is mostly predictable -- if you've seen the trailer, I think you know where this thing is headed. That said, I thought there were some unexpected wrinkles along the way that gave this film some real honesty.

Hey, at least we can agree that we both had to hold back tears in Hugo. I loved that movie. (Levin can go read Dana Stevens' review.)

You make some very good points and I absolutely agree with you that predictability is not a deciding factor in whether a movie works or not. For example, we know how most romantic comedies are going to end. What matters is the journey toward that resolution and how uniquely and interestingly it is presented. For me, The Descendants just didn't make that journey interesting enough. I do agree with you on some of the specific moments you pointed out, however. The daughter's scene underwater was fantastic, as was the scene where we learn a little more about her friend. It just wasn't enough to push the whole thing into the "win" column.

I've always felt though, that movies have a lot more to do with what you take into them than is generally noted, so that's enlightening to hear the moments about the culture and backdrop of the story that hit home for you. Critic Jim Emerson always says that "liking" or "disliking" a movie is usually the least interesting part of any review. The important parts are why a person reacted the way they did.

[Katy Lied]

I also had difficulty with such a segregated view of Hawai'i. Don't get me wrong, Hawai'i can be plenty segregated, but you have that scene at the end with the huge family and in all those generations being on the islands there's not one local looking person in the family? Not one asian? Nothing even resembling mixed blood? Or at the scene with all the people gathered at the Clooney home, they don't have one person even approaching brown as a friend? I know these ethnic enclaves, particularly white, are known for not mixing, but that seemed a little extreme. I've thought about this a bit and figured it must have been a conscious decision on Payne's part to really create the world he was going for. These families definitely exist -- that's Punahou for you -- and I think he just decided to go to a bit of an extreme to create a certain world. It's funny because there was a lady that came from a family like this that lived at the end of our street growing up in Utah. Father was a wealthy haole businessman, she attended Punahou, grew up her entire life on Oahu, and didn't know shit about Hawai'i. When Clooney says "we can't even speak pigeon, let alone Hawaiian," that is exactly this lady, and my mom absolutely couldn't stand her. (btw, both my wife and I had a full-on laugh-out-loud moment at that line, and we were the only two in the entire theater laughing -- kind of awkward for us.)

I havent seen the movie yet, but Fred Hemmings is portuguese, not haole. I've known large portuguese families who don't mix except with other portuguese, but they do speak pigeon with a vengeance.

[MarkGrace]

I havent seen the movie yet, but Fred Hemmings is portuguese, not haole. I've known large portuguese families who don't mix except with other portuguese, but they do speak pigeon with a vengeance.

Who is Fred Hemmings? I'm not familiar with that name.

Funny but I don't have that impression of the Portuguese. Isn't half the island part Portuguese? I know my mom is.

[creekster]

Hugo was pretty visually, but inert emotionally.

I sort of agree with this. I was ambivalent about the impact or force of the story. Very predictable and a little dull. The characters were a bit cartoonish; Melies in particular.

But it was gorgeous and beautiful and engaging at that level.

[DapperDan]

Hugo was pretty visually, but inert emotionally.

My dad and I both felt that if not for the gorgeous sets (cg and real) we would have been completely bored. The story seemed to just meander around without any direction.

[TripletDaddy]

Did anyone go check out Sholmes? How does it compare to the first one?

[RobinFinderson]

Did anyone go check out Sholmes? How does it compare to the first one?

I saw this last night with LR. I would never seek this movie out, but we were on a walkabout in Westwood, and we showed up at the Regency Village Theater about five minutes before a showing, so we bought tickets.

I didn't see the first one. I enjoyed the movie. It was stupid, but kind of fun. Nothing really memorable, and it seemed to drag on forever, but it was worth the $16 and access to the Regency's $1 hotdogs (I ate three).

[woot]

I saw this last night with LR. I would never seek this movie out, but we were on a walkabout in Westwood, and we showed up at the Regency Village Theater about five minutes before a showing, so we bought tickets.

I didn't see the first one. I enjoyed the movie. It was stupid, but kind of fun. Nothing really memorable, and it seemed to drag on forever, but it was worth the $16 and access to the Regency's $1 hotdogs (I ate three).

It's been a while, but as I recall, the first movie really focused on Holmes, with Watson just being the trusty sidekick (Robin to Holmes' Batman). One of the reasons why the British version is so much better is that, as in the books, Watson is the protagonist, allowing the audience to view Holmes' antics through a skeptical, but still admiring, lens. It also provides some distance, so that Holmes' unrealistic perfection doesn't grate as much.

And seriously, anyone who hasn't checked out the British Sherlock Holmes, you really should. There were only 3 episodes in the first season, each of them about 90 minutes.