Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[Groggy]

Ned Kelly (1970) - 3/10 - Boring pseudo-Western starring Mick Jagger as the Aussie outlaw, with a score by Waylon Jennings and Shel Silverstein. (I hope next to discover a Jesse James flick scored by Johnny Cash and Richard Scarry.) Aside from an authentically gritty appearance and a decent final showdown it's got little going for it, least of all Jagger's pathetic performance. A collection of random incidents lazily filmed by Tony Richardson (what happened to him post-Light Brigade? Lack of John Osborne?), sloppily constructed and damned near incomprehensible. The 2003 Heath Ledger flick is The Wild Bunch in comparison.

[drinkanddestroy]

so after all the chatter a little while back about

The Departed (2006)
I decided to just see the movie again. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it much, but largely due to trying to me trying to be too smart by half (I deciding I KNEW some major plot twist that never happened and kinda screwed me  )

I saw it anew with a clear mind, and this is a good movie. I give it an 8/10

It's ironic that Scorsese finally won his Best Director Oscar for this movie. This is not nearly his greatest movie (I can name at least 8 Scorsese movies I prefer to this one); sometimes, there's a tendency to judge movies more more harshly when they are made by a legend like Marty -- so a solid film that would earn high praise if made by most, gets criticized for not being up to par. Well, I'm gonna try my best not to let that happen, but to view this movie on its own. And it is a good movie.

--- The acting is very good up and down the line. Particularly great are Leo, Damon, Wahlberg, and Ray Winstone as "French".

--- Scorsese really, really knows his violence. The violence here is great and and looks incredibly realistic. (I see he liked murders to happen with a  gunshot to the head, so we get numerous re-enactments of the Zapruder film).

--- I know Marty loves using rock songs on his soundtracks, but I didn't like the use of "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" here. It may have a catchy intro, but I didn't think it was appropriate here; it seems to me to be more appropriate for an action movie, and this is really a drama.


I noticed the movie is #51 on the IMDB 250. It doesn't belong there. (Though if Django Unchained is #44, I guess anything makes sense, right?) And that Best Picture Oscar? No. (I didn't see any of the other Best Picture nominees from '06, but the best picture from '06 that I saw was Inside Man. One of the greatest, if not THE greatest, heist movies ever made. Inside Man indeed won the AFI Award for Best Movie of the Year  ) So I guess you could say I think the movie is overrated.

But what the heck. It's a good movie 

---------------
Next up on my re-watch list will be Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I saw each of them once, 3 or 4 years ago. I really didn't understand TD very much; and with RB, I just felt so dirty watching Jake LaMotta. There are many movies that have a hero/main character/protagonist or whatever that is not a good person, or even a very bad person, but on some level you like him or identify with him, for some reason. But I just thoroughly despised him, didn't feel the slightest ounce of sympathy; not just cuz of his rage and how violent he was, but even his dialogue with the girl made me so uncomfortable, none of it is romantic, it's like it's all done in a very dirty manner. I mean, I absolutely felt nothing whatsoever for the guy on any level, and I am sure that affected my enjoyment of the movie.
[I remember now that I once had this discussion (perhaps with rrpower?) over whether sympathizing with a character at least on some level, is necessary for enjoying a movie].
Anyway, I gotta watch TD and RB from scratch and see how I feel.....

[cigar joe]

Pickup on South Street 10/10 see review under title thread.

[noodles_leone]

I like the opening narration - and I love that whole sequence. From the opening frames to the end of the character introductions is one of PTA's best sequence as a filmmaker thus far, up there with the Boogie Nights drug deal and the first processing session in The Master.

I think this is PTA's best movie. Maybe. Or Boogie Nights. Or The Maste. One of those. Either way, this is the fastest 3-hour movie film ever made. Flies by. I swear it's actually only two hours long, at most.

It does include his worst scene ever as a writer/director though. Actually, I fucking loathe it. I forget it's in the movie every damn time I watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ_phQnNE80

I have no problem with the opening sequence itself (it didn't age well, that's all) but with the voice over. Who's doing the voice over? Is it a professional actor? I even wondered if PTA did it himself. I have the feeling I could do better (I just doesn't have much of a voice, but the guy doing the voice over usn't that impressive either).

Once again, I love most of the individual scenes but what is this movie about? If the topic is just "we're lonely, and sometimes we really meet, but above all, strange things happen", it's a bit light for me. Especially the "and it did happen" part.

Yeah, terrible singing sequence. Same reaction here.

[noodles_leone]

so after all the chatter a little while back about

The Departed (2006)
I decided to just see the movie again. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it much, but largely due to trying to me trying to be too smart by half (I deciding I KNEW some major plot twist that never happened and kinda screwed me  )

I saw it anew with a clear mind, and this is a good movie. I give it an 8/10

Haha told you. And it will continue to grow on you with future re-watchs.

[drinkanddestroy]

Haha told you. And it will continue to grow on you with future re-watchs.

oh, so now you're taking credit for me re-watching this? I said all along that what screwed me was my belief that there was a major twist involving Leo and Damon, which never happened. (I just couldn't believe that between Leo and Damon, they'd actually make Damon the bad guy and Leo the good guy!)

[noodles_leone]

No I'm not taking any credits for your actions, you're a big man now. I just told any single member of this forum on many occasions that this film grows on you with re-watchs. I remember you talking about the fake twist problem in your initial review which means I read your initial review which means (because I'm pretty much a robot) that i couldn't help but tell you the exact same "it will grow on you when you'll re watch it" shit I bored to death anyone on Earth talking about this movie with.

[dave jenkins]

I just told any single member of this forum on many occasions that this film grows on you with re-watchs.

One reason why the new steelbook blu-ray is an essential purchase. Another reason: http://www.amazon.com/Departed-Blu-ray-SteelBook-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B004PE0SR2/ref=sr_1_7?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1366816717&sr=1-7&keywords=the+departed

[drinkanddestroy]

which means I read your initial review

which means you must have a lot of time on your hands 

[noodles_leone]

For you, always 

[stanton]

Actually The Departed did not grow on me. It is still a 6/10

First half is pretty good, than it gets rid of ideas. And it has not that much interesting style compared to all the Scorsese stuff from the last century.

The original from Hongkong is the superior film.

[noodles_leone]

And it has not that much interesting style compared to all the Scorsese stuff from the last century.

I don't think so. It had exactly as much (technical) influence on me than Goodfellas and Casino.

The original from Hongkong is the superior film.

Never seen Internal Affairs, but it seems to make the consensus when opposed to Scorsese's film. I also heard that it handled the plot much better, while characters and style were better in The Departed. But I doubt it would beat one of the greatest films of the decade in my personal ranking

[PowerRR]

I have no problem with the opening sequence itself (it didn't age well, that's all) but with the voice over. Who's doing the voice over? Is it a professional actor? I even wondered if PTA did it himself. I have the feeling I could do better (I just doesn't have much of a voice, but the guy doing the voice over usn't that impressive either).

Once again, I love most of the individual scenes but what is this movie about? If the topic is just "we're lonely, and sometimes we really meet, but above all, strange things happen", it's a bit light for me. Especially the "and it did happen" part.

Yeah, terrible singing sequence. Same reaction here.

I also thought the narrator was PTA at first. It's actually Ricky Jay. He's in the film, he works on the set of the game show (I forget his exact role - look him up).

Obviously there's a whole bunch of 'short stories' involved in Magnolia. But I'd say the main point of the film is to answer the question if whether or not these 'strange occurrences/meetings' happen by chance or if there's some Godly, fate-like reason behind them. That's sort of what the narrator sets up at the end of the opening sequence, where he seems to imply that there arefate-like reasons for these things (which, following my theory of everything, sort of sums up the whole point of the movie right away).

We're then brought through the movie, where everything which happens between the characters seems valid as being mere coincidences. And then the frog rain comes, the one thing which happens to unite all the characters. This, also, in the 'Magnolia universe', is the only thing at this point which can not be a coincidence. There have been reports of frog rain in real life in the past, but nothing even close to this extent. Therefore there must be some sort of Godly reason why it happened. And with that, there's the  hint at a possibility of all these meetings and occurrences we've witnessed thus far to be much more than just mere coincidences. Everyone who actually meets has a certain emptiness which another person fulfills. They meet for a fate-like reason.

That's why I hate when people complain about how 'not all the characters come together perfectly like they expect'. If this were to happen, it would ruin the entire chance vs. reason theme, and the whole point of the film for me.

If that doesn't make sense/I'm analyzing it way too much....sorry, i've seen magnolia too many fucking times.

[Groggy]

The Newsroom: Pilot Episode
Probably the best single episode of a TV show I've ever seen. Brilliant.

Nah, it's just more of the same from Aaron Sorkin. The Pilots to The West Wing and Studio 60 had the exact same plot, with the lead character making a public ass of himself. Jeff Daniels' rant doesn't even make sense; Americans are more fear-obsessed than they were at the height of the Cold War? Plus the character dynamics are roughly identical to both TWW and Sports Night.

I'm seven episodes through the first season, with three to go. The Newsroom has two things going for it: the dialogue and the acting. If nothing else, Sorkin's great at witty banter, and this show has tons. The cast is perfect, with some clever playing against type. The most pleasant surprise: Olivia Munn, G4 nerd goddess, can really act! In episode five she gets to show off her Japanese skills and go toe-to-toe with Sam Waterston, no mean feat. Jane Fonda has a brilliant one-scene cameo as a ruthless corporate executive (channeling Ted Turner perhaps?). Terry Crews, veteran of several Adam Sandler flicks, plays a no-nonsense bodyguard. Dev Patel is surprisingly good when he has more to work with than Bigfoot jokes. Actor-wise my only complaint is the insipid John Gallagher-Alison Pill-anonymous douchenozzle love triangle.

Otherwise, I've been disappointed so far. The show is a lumpen mixture of everything good and bad about Sorkin. The show is brilliant moment-by-moment: the specific scenes mentioned are really great stuff. But Sorkin can't seem to fit a whole episode together; even the best of the seven I watched (Amen and the Bin Laden-focused one) have too many annoying asides. Do we really need Will getting baked the night he announces OBL's death? Must every show have a lengthy screaming match between Will and Mackenzie over who broke up with whom? Who cares if Jim or Don dates Maggie? Why does Sorkin need to revisit identical scenarios from his previous shows: on-air screw-ups, unresolved sexual tension, death threats, characters visiting shrinks, pratfalls, Gilbert and Sullivan jokes? He's more formula than How I Met Your Mother.

Coherence aside, The Newsroom can't get past its fatally flawed premise. The whole point of the show is that journalism should report the news honestly, confronting liars and idiots rather than strive for false objectivity. Fair enough in theory. In practice what makes Will, whose new persona is confrontational and (liberal) partisan, different from Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann? We keep hearing Will's a registered Republican, but this is a purely informed trait; he's as liberal as Josiah Bartlet. Unlike West Wing, where Republicans do occasionally come off smart and reasonable (remember Emily Procter?), every conservative except a gay black Santorum lover is a drooling straw man. I hate the Tea Party as much as Sorkin evidently does, but there's something to be said for presenting an opposing argument in strongest terms. Sorkin, of course, chooses to pick on characters too dumb to operate a Twitter feed.

There's also the fact that, by setting the show a year or two in the past, Sorkin gets to revisit real stories that he feels the media botched. The Monday morning quarterbacking inherent in showing how, say, the BP oil spill should have been covered (in his opinion) is unbelievably self-congratulatory.

I guess even Aaron Sorkin is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Sports Night is near-perfect, The West Wing great for its first two seasons, Studio 60 disastrous and The Newsroom skirting around the edges. That or he works better in films or theatre, where his excesses are constrained by a two hour run time.

This is a longish, digressive rant, but there's no TV thread so here we are.

[drinkanddestroy]

one of the greatest films of the decade in my personal ranking

Richard Roeper ranked The Departed as the greatest film of the 2000's

http://blog.richardroeper.com/?p=1499

And here is Roeper's review of the movie http://www.richardroeper.com/reviews/thedeparted.aspx