Rate The Last Movie You Saw.

[pathoftheturtle]

Well, that's where we differ. Good horror, the way I see it, deals with deeper subjects than average adventure movies do.

[divemaster]

A Moment to Remember (2004)
Directed by John H. Lee
Starring Woo-sung Jung, Ye-jin Son, and Jong-hak Baek
In Korean with English subtitles
Film: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

When a Korean romance and melodrama film works, it really works. A Moment to Remember hit on all cylinders for me.

Su-jin is the pampered daughter of a high-ranking property developer. She is used to being chauffeured around and has made a name for herself as a designer. Cheol-su is a skilled but headstrong carpenter who works for Su-jin's father. Cheol-su is content to drive a ratty old pickup and live in conditions that we might classify as "trailer park chic."

Anyway, in typical movie fashion they have a meet cute where they don't exactly hit it off right off the bat. A semi-comical misunderstanding sets things in motion. We soon discover that each has past baggage (he, a jailed mother who abandoned him and she, an affair with a married man). Their differences become less and less important to each of them as their feelings develop.

I've just described a plot seen countless times in film. Throw in the inevitable fatherly disapproval and we've got the same old story, right?

Not so fast. This set-up takes you about halfway in. It is at this point where the film really grabs you and starts tugging at the old heartstrings. What is so good about the first hour is just how well we get to know the characters and really care about them. Cardboard cutouts used simply to move the plot along they are not.

Without going into detail, let me just say that this movie leads us down an emotional path. Once the stage is set we can guess what types of scenarios our two leads will face. For example, if this were a movie about a kid with cancer (which it is not), we would know we were in for the chemo scenes, the hair falling out, the struggles, the temporary victories and setbacks, and (depending on the film) eventual triumph or bring out the hankies.

It is a testament to the director and the cast that the "inevitable scenes" were handled so well. I never felt manipulated; never felt like the drama or emotions were being forced down my throat.

A Moment to Remember really elevated itself. 4.5 stars for me. Deduct half a star because one of the subplots seemed thrown in and not really important to the story. A minor quibble.

Important note: This review is for the 117 minute "theatrical version." The 2-disc Korean Special Edition DVD also contains an extended 144 minute "director's cut." However, I have not watched it and a couple of opinions that I read indicate that if the theatrical cut was a 4-5 star film, the extended would rate poorer by comparison.

[divemaster]

The Seventh Curse (1986)
Directed by Nam Lai-Choi
Starring Yun-Fat Chow, Maggie Cheung, and Siu-hou Chin
In Cantonese or Mandarin with English subtitles
Film: 4 stars (out of 5)

I got to thinking about grade-B fun popcorn flicks, guilty pleasures and all that. And a film that immediately pops into mind is The Seventh Curse, a mid '80s Hong Kong movie that as far as I know only comes on a cheapie R0 DVD. Buy it, rent it--whatever. It's great for those nights where you just want to sit down to some over-the-top campy fun.

I could sit here and try to type out a plot synopsis, but really there's no point. You can read the synopsis off the back of the DVD, which makes little to no sense, yet somehow tells you everthing you need to know. This film is a gonzo mixed bag of just about everything fun you could pack into a film. It's like Indiana Jones dropped acid and walked into kung-fu/black-magic horror/gore/human sacrifice/monster/jungle adventure/softcore titillation/shoot-'em up action film.

Here's a quick run-down of just some of what you will find in this movie:
-- a kung fu martial-arts doctor
-- a jungle-dwelling "worm tribe"
-- a giant booby-trapped Buddha
-- children being crushed to death in a stone press so their blood can be collected for nefarious purposes
-- a flying brain-eating fetus ("the little ghost")
-- a flying bat-like demon ("Old Ancestor") that looks suspiciously ripped off from "Alien"
-- a blue-eyed skelton (also "Old Ancestor") that looks suspiciously ripped off from the "Tales from the Crypt" Crypt-keeper
-- a woman carving out a piece of her naked breast in order to feed it to a man to cure him of an evil spell
-- a man ripping into his own stomach only to find it filled with writhing maggots
-- a couple of gratuitous wet t-shirt moments
-- a cute and perky reporter who turns out to be fairly handy with automatic weapons and booby traps because (of course!) she studied Viet Cong tactics in jounalism school

and
-- Chow Yun Fat standing around puffing on a pipe the whole movie until he shows up at the end out of nowhere with a bazooka (!)

So, grab some munchies, maybe a beer or two and have fun!

[mystima]

will keep that one in mind....sounds like something i would have watched when i was younger....(I used to watch all kinds of stuff like this when i was a teenager....lol)

[Mattrick]

Well, that's where we differ. Good horror, the way I see it, deals with deeper subjects than average adventure movies do.

Well dramatical horror, yes. I find there is a difference between them. Some horror movies don't say to much but are incredibly creepy all the same. Look at something like The Evil Dead when it was released; cheesy by todays standards but it scared a lot of people when it was released. I think most horror deals with deep fears of humanity and to me that is what fuels horror; fear of the unknown. And The Mist captures that essence to a tea. The effect of fear and what it does to ordinary people on a grand scale. Or something like The Shining shows the effect of fear to ordinary people on a small scale.

If by good horror you refer to a movie that is very good but still horror (i.e. 28 Days Later, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense) then yes good horror has more to say. I still think The Mist is great horror despite problems in the narrative. It had good characters and performances which is more than I can say about 90% of the horrors out there. If a horror creeps me out and has either good acting/writing/direction it gets an instant props from me. That's why The Last Exorcism was so great to me, it had everything as far as I'm concerned.

[Jean]

No, I don't deny that. But it really just made it all the more disappointing to me. I certainly appreciate good acting and a well-directed show, but again, it's not at all fulfilling to me if the narrative elements fall short. As a youth, I read lots and lots of comic books. Now, comic publishers are experts at the whole range of marketing techniques that encourage collecting. Through many avenues, they insinuate that readers will get more out of their products if they immerse themselves in that world; get all of the past issues to really grasp the big picture and it'll be much more satisfying than this single adventure is. The problem I had was that I was eventually subscribing to every single Marvel title, and most of the DC titles, and buying all of the Star Wars novels, and all of the Star Trek novels, and much more. Well, I reached a point where I realized that I really wasn't getting much out of all that expense, and I resolved to focus on just one franchise. Collect just one line of make-believe products. I picked Stephen King, who in my view occupies the border between popular fiction and deeper literature, which I did want to purchase more of. Just after that, I decided to look up the thedarktower internet message boards and see if it might be rewarding to discuss SK with other fans. However, I've gotten a little less sure about King's rather special role on that border. Sometimes I think he has something of a split personality. On the one hand, I love the attitude he shows in his books; the all-too-rare belief that fans of the commercialized genres aren't necessarily stupid or totally insensitive to more subtle ideas, that we don't always have to be talked down to... yet I also feel that the worst of the film adaptions of his work do exactly that. That's what makes them worst, IMO: all of the elusive points are dropped and they're totally geared to the lowest common denominator in our society. But what really blows my mind is that it seems to be the films SK has the MOST influence over that do this the most, while those he has LEAST influence over may still have artistic merit. It is as though he just expects less of people who watch trashy movies than he does of people who read trashy paperbacks. The readers get some insights whilst being separated from our cash, the viewers just get played.

but isn't it the essential difference between movies and books? Reading books is by definition something elitist (and solitary), while watching movies is by definition mass entertainment; likewise, a writer is someone who by definition pours his soul onto a piece of paper in solitude, and moviemakers - a group of people whose main object is to make money enough to feed all those involved. Thus, pulp fiction (especially when it is a publisher's project rather than an author's creation) is somehow not-quite-literature, some under-literature, while director's cinema (when the group grudgingly submits to the will of one man at the expense of profit) is somehow super-cinema, uber-movies.

[Mattrick]

I think the main difference between movies and books is that a great novel isn't necessarily entertaining one. Where I think all good movies have to be entertaining. Whether you're entertained by musical numbers or great acting, snappy dialogue, special effects, thrills and chills - movies are for entertainment purposes. Some people can be entertained by a very intriguing and intelligent film that has amazing ideas. Movies like this for me are like Les Planetes Sauvage and Dark City. But I can also be entertained by an over the top craze fest like Machete. The attraction to a horror movie is not it's themes and messages but if it can scare you and creep you out. If they contain themes then that's icing on the cake.

[Ricky]

Maybe the current discussion can be moved to the General Movie Discussion thread. What do you think Jean?

[Jean]

sure! alas, it isn't up to me - you'll have to ask feverish or Heather

(or Brice, if you can catch him)

[pathoftheturtle]

Sounds good, if someone can disentangle the posts. It started with ShannonsMovies. This is general movie discussion, of a strain touching on general discussion of philosophy of art in all media. Sorry for staying off-topic: just happens to be a strain I find irresistible -- one that actually ties into a number of existing threads. I am honestly not sure whether movies are pulp-ish by definition. Different schools of thought exist among filmmakers and critics about that. The point I was trying to make is that the belief that they ARE so defined may be self-fulfilling. My opinion is that King may have that idea and that although he has the ability to transcend the plot he's working with in the solitary fashion of a writer communicating with the soul of readers, he lacks the skills that some screenwriters have to express such points in visual media. It's easy to say, "Well that's impossible by definition" but I suspect it may just be crying "sour grapes" to do so. Anyway, I never like to be part of the masses or treated as such. If I'm wrong and movies really cannot be developed into something more than that, then I suppose that I'll just keep going less and less. Right now I'm researching a possible article about the television industry.

[tamez]

Saw the Change-Up day before yesterday.
I thought it was pretty funny. much better than I thought it was going to be.
I am enjoying Jason Bateman's comeback.

[Mattrick]

Just watched Insidious and well, it was freaking awesome. I had high hopes for the movie when I first saw the trailer (which by the way is one of the best I've ever seen...more movies should make trailers like that one) and it didn't disappoint at all. It delivered on just about everything I watch a horror movie for.

Leigh Whannell is definitely a great and original horror writer. I haven't seen Dead Silence yet (though I heard it was also very creepy) but I definitely want to after how much I enjoyed this. Saw broke new ground for horror as did this in my opinion. James Wan is simply a great horror director and he also co-edited the movie so it's obvious he had a great hand in that as well. The atmosphere and his style of shooting is really rather unique. A lot of very creepy imagery and a lot of it came through in the editing process, especially

Spoiler:

the people on the couch in the further, with the suddenly smiling faces

. Like most great horrors I watch I will no doubt rewatch it again tomorrow or the day after. I enjoyed just about every aspect of the movie. It was very well plotted and much allusion to what is learned later on in the film in the beginning. The opening credits (which I loved) definitely takes on a different meaning upon finishing the movie.

Whether or not this horror was really that good or that, along with The Last Exorcism, there is so few good horror movies made this side of the ocean, I don't know. But I know it's the kind of horror movie I want to see coming out. Too tired to really write much more of a review than this...maybe write a more comprensive one after I rewatch it and I'm not coming down from being drunk. My only real gripe was not the actress who played the wife, I thought she was fine, it was the wife's character itself; there really wasn't much of one. Her role was mostly to act scared throughout the first half of the movie. A little more insight into her character would have been nice.

5/5

[Shannon]

Thor
[1-----2-----3-----4-----5]
[-------------------X------]

Found a not-so-bad quality download online today, downloaded it, watched it. Was pretty pleased with it. Was never a Thor fan growing up, he just seemed liked a one dimensional comic book character. And although this is undoubtably a comic book movie, it is easily one of the more dramatic that I've seen. A LITTLE bit more action was needed, and there seemed to be a lot of characters in the movie that didn't really have too much to do. One of those was Natalie Portman's character ... I love Natalie. Oh well.

It was a better than average movie, with some great bits of acting mixed in.

[pathoftheturtle]

It was better than average because there have been so many plainly awful movies to lower the curve. The first Iron Man was a pretty impressive adaptation of the material from a couple points of view. Thor was another downhill step in the inevitable wave of junk riding in on the coattails of that success because that's just the way that movies work nowadays. No, it's not the worst superhero movie that I've ever seen, but it's really pretty mindless. If you're going to make a Thor movie, I would have preferred something more rational over that incoherent mash.

4 out of 5 is way to generous, IMO, if the scale is meant to compare all film of every type. Maybe 4 out of 10 if the first 5 are just applied to pulp-style glitz.

[ur2ndbiggestfan]

The top 10 movies of 2011 (so far):

1. LIMITLESS
2. HANNA
3. KILL THE IRISHMAN
4. THE BEAVER
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA THE FIRST AVENGER
6. THE HELP
7. X-MEN FIRST CLASS
8. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
9. CARS 2 in 3D
10. INSIDIOUS

Please note: This list is subject to change without notice at any time for any reason(s) whatsoever.

[Shannon]

My One-To-Five Scale

One is pretty much static ... or a movie SO BAD you have to turn it off ... Very rarely does this happen to me.
Two is a BAD movie, watchable, with zero or very little enjoyment whatsoever.
Three is an average movie. Not too good, not too bad.
Four is a GOOD movie, enjoyable, with at least a little bit of greatness in it.
Five is pretty much an excellent movie. Doesn't have to be perfect, but lots of greatness in it. Thoroughly enjoyable.

That being said, Thor is a 3.5, but I round up.

[Mattrick]

I haven't seen Thor but I give it a 1/5 for trying to make me somewhat care with their collectible Dr. Pepper cans. I like bigger cans of Dr. Pepper!

[DoctorDodge]

My One-To-Five Scale

One is pretty much static ... or a movie SO BAD you have to turn it off ... Very rarely does this happen to me.
Two is a BAD movie, watchable, with zero or very little enjoyment whatsoever.
Three is an average movie. Not too good, not too bad.
Four is a GOOD movie, enjoyable, with at least a little bit of greatness in it.
Five is pretty much an excellent movie. Doesn't have to be perfect, but lots of greatness in it. Thoroughly enjoyable.

And yet you gave Withnail & I a 2. Shame on you, shame on you!!!

[Mattrick]

If Thor is a 4 then something like The Conversation by Coppola would be a 8/5.

[Shannon]

lol, DD, I'll change my rating of Withnail & I to a 3, just for you.

Mattrick, I haven't seen The Conversation. Checked out the imdb page, it has a good rating, but the synopsis doesn't really do anything for me. You recommend it, I assume?

[DoctorDodge]

lol, DD, I'll change my rating of Withnail & I to a 3, just for you.

Heh, well that's something, I suppose. Although I do recommend watching it again, but with subtitles. Not just to catch the rest of the dialogue, but also because it's without doubt one of those films that got better the more times I watched it. The first time, I didn't love it, but I liked it. Then I thought about the number of fantastic quotes, so I watched it again, and liked it a lot more. Third time, I loved it. Don't know when I realised it was one of my favourite films ever, but it couldn't have been long after the 4th or 5th time, anyway!

And Mattrick, have you watched Withnail & I? If not, I heartily recommend changing that asap!

Mattrick, I haven't seen The Conversation. Checked out the imdb page, it has a good rating, but the synopsis doesn't really do anything for me. You recommend it, I assume?

Yes, I've also never heard of it, but am now interested in it, especially after hearing Coppola's involvement. Just another film to add to the "must watch" list. Bloody hell, I've still got to watch Dogtooth that i bought a couple of weeks ago!

[Mattrick]

The Conversation is his best movie IMO. It's so overshadowed because he made it the same year he made The Godfather Part II. He was nominated for Best Director for both I believe. I've only seen it once but I've been dying to see it again, one of the finest directed movies I've ever seen. Probably Hackman's best role as well.

[Seymour_Glass]

The Conversation is one of Coppola's greats, definitely.

[Jean]

Bloody hell, I've still got to watch Dogtooth that i bought a couple of weeks ago!

Just Do It.

[fernandito]

Put a rush on that too.