Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Book, Movie & Podcast Reviews The Netflix Thread

Martha - about those horsies and duckies?

I'm absolute crap when it comes to symbolism; for all I know or care, the green light at the end of Daisy's dock is just to keep Gatsby's boat from running aground.

What I love about foreign movies comes down to this:
1) They are often beautifully filmed - I call them "eye candy."
2) They are more interesting than travelogues but allow me to visit other cultures
3) Being foreign, there's always something in there that will surprise me.

I've met a number of people who claim to be on good terms with Art, and several of them were crashing bores. Horses and duckies are just fine with me - especially if they're on tracks I haven't seen before.

Just rented and saw a gay theme movie, Boy Culture

All I can say it was so much better than this synopsis and was very enjoyable, well done movie.

Boy Culture on Netflix

Watched The Bicycle Thief last night. The kid was cool.

we just watched "He loves me, he loves me not"

Frankly, we were ready to turn it off after the first third of the film, my wife practically insisted that we do so. But I wanted to stick with it because some ranters spoke highly of the film. And indeed it came roaring through and turned into a terrific film.

Not a Netflix movie yet, but worth seeing never-the-less... and if you live somewhere without an independent theater you might have to wait for Netflix anyway. Anyway, see Juno (Fox Searchlight Pictures site). Fantastic, funny, sad, hopeful, irreverent film. Take your significant other and a box of tissues, mine cried through most of the last half of the movie.

How could i have forgotten one of the best theatrical pieces of our time -- Tony Kushner's

Angels in America

Exactly so.

Having said that, you may have had the misfortune, due to all our accolades, of expecting a kind of Epic...

What I remember it as, was an 'immersion' experience; the stunning thing, to me, was that the director could so thoroughly bring me into that character's life (not just 'bring to life' - but make ME live that life), in just the space of 100 minutes or so, and without anything tremendous or even all that substantive to do it with.

Actually, I just watched it again, recently, only this time the director's cut... it had a lot more at the end, and I did feel the same feeling, that it went on too long. However, I just chalked that up to seeing a different version first, viewing it in the theater the first time, and viewing it in non-optimum setting this time (with a bunch of kids in the background, playing video games). I may watch it again, under better conditions, and try the theatrical release... see if I can recapture that first response again.

There was a film that recently reminded me of it, a little - 'A Good Year' with Russell Crowe. It's good, too, but not really in the same way, even though there were some parallels.

Ditto Reality, same for me.

I distinctly remember disliking the director's cut of Cinema Paradiso - I remember it because it's unusual for me to take time to watch two versions in succession, unusual because I really expected to like the director's version better. But it explained a lot that just didn't need explaining.

And I was fortunate because I watched it with only vague expectations (as in, "Wasn't this moviefamous for something?"). I didn't have any idea whether it was made in 1980 or 1940; that helped, too.

This is a very interesting phenomena that I also have frequently observed. When I have heard high praise for a movie, it sets an expectation that is hard to meet or exceed. On the other hand, I can be thrilled by finding some unexpected gem. Even if the gem is partly flawed, it is so much easier to enjoy a discovered pleasure.