The last movie you saw

[U4EA]

Burn After Reading: 7/10
It had its moments. Favourite one remains Brad Pitt getting punched in the face by John Malkovich.

Year One: embarrasingly bad / 10
This was just so disjointed and badly put together. It went nowhere, had no point, just a loose connection of places and events and mostly dumb jokes. I had high hopes for Michael Cera [with his brilliantly awkward George Michael Bluth performance in mind], but he just didn't deliver. Meh.

[Therac-25]

Took 3 year old son to Fantastic Mr. Fox. Oddly creepy and enjoyable. 8/10

[Whiskey 7]

Children of Men. 9/10

Holy shit, how have I not seen this film up to now? it's fucking fantastic.

Yes it was. I got to see this one again... and soon..

congrats on 42k btw

42 thousand that is congrats

[U4EA]

Took 3 year old son to Fantastic Mr. Fox. Oddly creepy and enjoyable. 8/10

I cannot wait to see this, was one of my favourite books as a kid

[obsidian]

Event Horizon: 8/10

Just saw the full movie for the first time. Creepy. Definitely one of the most nightmarish sci-fi/horror movies of all time.

[feedback]

I like that movie a lot, but it could have been so much more.

[Whiskey 7]

Event Horizon: 8/10

Just saw the full movie for the first time. Creepy. Definitely one of the most nightmarish sci-fi/horror movies of all time.

One of my favourites obsidian, and only saw it about 3 weeks ago.

A must see for a sci-fi buff

[obsidian]

The movie looks like something filmed recently (special effects are pretty good) but it's weird seeing Laurence Fishburne look that young. Then again, it's weirder still seeing pictures of him as Cowboy Curtis on PeeWee's Playhouse:

[Hannibal]

Terminator Salvation: 7/10. Pretty good. I like the trend of sci-fi toward a more gritty, in your face approach to camerawork and storytelling. Worthington is perfect in the role of Marcus. My only complaint is that, even though TS is centered on a very personal story, the movie would have benefited by a few more set pieces that revealed the epic nature of the wider conflict (mainly during the last 40 minutes or so). Still, I was pleasantly surprised.

[Doombrain]

Terminator Salvation: 6/10.

[sliver]

Nobody's seen any recent releases???

I went to THE ROAD last night, and absolutely loved it. 9/10.

Nit-pick away:

John Hillcoat’s The Road begins on a poetic note with a triptych of colourful, static images like floral portraiture in veneration of the beauty of nature: sunlight through green leaves; yellow blossoms rustling by the side of a house; vivid pink petals.

Then our protagonist wakes up.

Gone are the flowers. The apocalypse has come to pass; it arrived in “a shear of light and a series of low concussions,” annihilating humans, animals, and plants alike. The few survivors were left to grope through a bleak, monochrome landscape, blanketed by a recurrent, pneumonia-inducing haze evocative of the destruction of Pompeii and its utter finality.

Dressed in grubby, layered parkas like vagabonds, starving in the total absence of any traditional sources of sustenance, the unnamed father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) are travelling south to escape the lethality of northern winters.

The film’s iconography almost seems appropriated from The Grapes of Wrath: a desaturated visual aesthetic of 9/11-like ashy permeation; the vagrancy and perpetual borderline starvation of the protagonists; and the underlying migration story, which motivates the title as well as the narrative. The sheer griminess of the landscape, the atmosphere, and even the people is refreshingly (if unpleasantly) authentic to the extent that it is almost incomparable to anything outside Terry Gilliam’s oeuvre.

But The Road, which is based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, quickly takes a departure from normalcy into a Bizarro World parody of Steinbeck’s story as father and son encounter other members of the far-flung remnants of humanity, now reduced mostly to thieves, murderers, rapists, and cannibals.

The man’s wife (Charlize Theron) foretold these horrors and took her own life, believing mere “survival” would be worthless in a world where ugliness, danger, and deprivation substituted for beauty, security, and happiness.

Like José Saramago’s Blindness and its respective film adaptation, The Road is interested in exploring what happens to humanity in the face of hopelessness and desperation. Characterized by the same frank but never gratuitous brutality manifest in No Country For Old Men, this post-apocalyptic survival story is often difficult, occasionally disturbing, but always riveting.

While there are a few hide-your-eyes moments, nothing is shown for the sake of the showing: there is gore on display, but director Hillcoat wisely eschews gratuitousness, proving for once and for all that restraint (matched here by a mild and unpretentious musical score) lives on in Hollywood amongst the near-monthly instalments of torture porn.

Since his mainstream debut in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mortensen has consistently impressed with his performances, earning accolades for roles in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Here he is at his absolute peak, encompassing the concealed but explosive formidability of his Promises mafioso as well as the duty-bound grimness of his History dad, but balancing these with an overwhelming paternal love nowhere to be found in either of those films.

The supporting includes Robert Duvall and the always-engaging Guy Pearce.

But the real surprise is that, if anything, they are all outdone by 13-year-old Smit-McPhee, who offers an impossibly sincere performance as the son both unready and unwilling to face the prospect of his father’s eventual death even as Mortensen’s character attempts to groom him into an independent survivor who will persevere when he is one day left alone.

For its sporadic inclusion of brand-name products, The Road will inevitably face criticism from the same Adbusters types who got mad about Spider-Man landing ever so briefly on a beer company’s eighteen-wheeler in one of that trilogy’s web-slinging scenes. But this is verisimilitude, not product placement; it is precisely the utter banality—to us—of a Coke can or a Cheetos package, over which our protagonists become almost tragically excited, which makes these moments resonant.

To put it simply, The Road is the best movie 2009 has offered up so far. Perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the maxim that the journey is more important than the destination, this spell-binding story feels destined for recognition at the 82nd Academy Awards.

[Captain]

9/11

[menkent]

hope your high school paper enjoys that

[LawL]

Nobody's seen any recent releases???

I went to THE ROAD last night, and absolutely loved it. 9/10.

Nit-pick away:

John Hillcoat’s The Road begins on a poetic note with a triptych of colourful, static images like floral portraiture in veneration of the beauty of nature: sunlight through green leaves; yellow blossoms rustling by the side of a house; vivid pink petals.

Then our protagonist wakes up.

Gone are the flowers. The apocalypse has come to pass; it arrived in “a shear of light and a series of low concussions,” annihilating humans, animals, and plants alike. The few survivors were left to grope through a bleak, monochrome landscape, blanketed by a recurrent, pneumonia-inducing haze evocative of the destruction of Pompeii and its utter finality.

Dressed in grubby, layered parkas like vagabonds, starving in the total absence of any traditional sources of sustenance, the unnamed father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) are travelling south to escape the lethality of northern winters.

The film’s iconography almost seems appropriated from The Grapes of Wrath: a desaturated visual aesthetic of 9/11-like ashy permeation; the vagrancy and perpetual borderline starvation of the protagonists; and the underlying migration story, which motivates the title as well as the narrative. The sheer griminess of the landscape, the atmosphere, and even the people is refreshingly (if unpleasantly) authentic to the extent that it is almost incomparable to anything outside Terry Gilliam’s oeuvre.

But The Road, which is based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, quickly takes a departure from normalcy into a Bizarro World parody of Steinbeck’s story as father and son encounter other members of the far-flung remnants of humanity, now reduced mostly to thieves, murderers, rapists, and cannibals.

The man’s wife (Charlize Theron) foretold these horrors and took her own life, believing mere “survival” would be worthless in a world where ugliness, danger, and deprivation substituted for beauty, security, and happiness.

Like José Saramago’s Blindness and its respective film adaptation, The Road is interested in exploring what happens to humanity in the face of hopelessness and desperation. Characterized by the same frank but never gratuitous brutality manifest in No Country For Old Men, this post-apocalyptic survival story is often difficult, occasionally disturbing, but always riveting.

While there are a few hide-your-eyes moments, nothing is shown for the sake of the showing: there is gore on display, but director Hillcoat wisely eschews gratuitousness, proving for once and for all that restraint (matched here by a mild and unpretentious musical score) lives on in Hollywood amongst the near-monthly instalments of torture porn.

Since his mainstream debut in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mortensen has consistently impressed with his performances, earning accolades for roles in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Here he is at his absolute peak, encompassing the concealed but explosive formidability of his Promises mafioso as well as the duty-bound grimness of his History dad, but balancing these with an overwhelming paternal love nowhere to be found in either of those films.

The supporting includes Robert Duvall and the always-engaging Guy Pearce.

But the real surprise is that, if anything, they are all outdone by 13-year-old Smit-McPhee, who offers an impossibly sincere performance as the son both unready and unwilling to face the prospect of his father’s eventual death even as Mortensen’s character attempts to groom him into an independent survivor who will persevere when he is one day left alone.

For its sporadic inclusion of brand-name products, The Road will inevitably face criticism from the same Adbusters types who got mad about Spider-Man landing ever so briefly on a beer company’s eighteen-wheeler in one of that trilogy’s web-slinging scenes. But this is verisimilitude, not product placement; it is precisely the utter banality—to us—of a Coke can or a Cheetos package, over which our protagonists become almost tragically excited, which makes these moments resonant.

To put it simply, The Road is the best movie 2009 has offered up so far. Perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the maxim that the journey is more important than the destination, this spell-binding story feels destined for recognition at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Fuck off.

[xer0s]

For real...

[Ryoki]

Sliver you need to drastically change the way you write those things, they're fucking unreadable. Honestly, i don't know why i try to read them anyway every time you post one, i should know better by now.

Finally saw An inconvenient Truth 6/10

I thought mr. Gore made a few too many claims that vaguely sounded like boasts and made a few too many connections that made me frown a bit. Pity, it detracted from the message, which itself is of course spot on and totally righteous. Gore seems very much a decent guy & human being, but he's also a bit weird in a way.

[xer0s]

Sliver you need to drastically change the way you write those things, they're fucking unreadable. Honestly, i don't know why i try to read them anyway every time you post one, i should know better by now.

Gotta love his one sentence paragraphs. Run-on sentences ++

[plained]

4 me its reads like dialoughe ey not so much
writings

[o'dium]

I saw Blood Diamond last night, very good film, though its like District 9 in that I spent de entoir day thalkin loik a suth africha person bru. Enjoyed it though, and damn, Connily was hot as usual...

Also saw Childen of Men the other night for the first time, and it bloody rocked. That last constant shot that was like 8mins long, amazing. Great film.

[xer0s]

If you like constant shots, check out Andy Warhol's Empire...

[Don Carlos]

Or check out Russian Ark which is one 96 minute long shot. Brilliant in everyway.

[Don Carlos]

Four Christmases - 7/10

Good mindless CHristmas fun with some extremely funny bits thrown in for good meassure. Never notice how fit Reese Witherspoon is though...

[o'dium]

Or check out Russian Ark which is one 96 minute long shot. Brilliant in everyway.

Jesus christ HOW?!!?

*googles*

[MKJ]

finally saw Up.
a lot more engaging than i expected. talking dogs couldve used less screentime tho.

[Chupacabra]

Keep up the good work sliver, I typically read your first and last chapter...

lol