You know, I forgot how awesome Raising Arizona is. I saw it once a few years ago, and thought it wasn't bad, but I watched it the other night and was totally mowed over by it. I cried at the end. Hilarious, thought-provoking, strangely uplifting, sometimes eerie. An all-around superb film. I can't even wrap my mind around half of the symbolism they throw down in that movie. This is why I, and so many others, love the damned Coen Brothers.

Well if there's any way to do an Evil Dead remake, it'd be that way. Better than making a PG-13 shitfest out of it like they did with Prom Night.

M'kay.


How are the plotting, characterization and dialog "very tight?" Any actual examples, or do you just like using banal buzzwords? What is inherently good about a wacky premise played "totally straight"? How does the setting cast its well-mined noir lineage into new light?

Something involving blacks and kettles comes to mind. And look; I managed to avoid all the shitty ad homs that belie your supposedly serious criticisms.

I went to see The Hobbit last night with the kids. 'twas fun.

They've beefed and fleshed up the story quite nicely by adding stuff, and even though I was initially irritated by the character of Radagast, I ended up liking the interpretation. Overall, a nice movie.

But.

I can't describe how heavily I dislike everything that has anything to do with 3D. I loathe it. Deeply. And even though we went to see the 2D version, because that was the only thing I wanted, it was obvious that several scenes, especially the Goblin Caves part, were meant to be "enjoyed" as a 3D thingy. Sorry, not for me. I can watch someone playing Rayman for a while and even enjoy it, but whenever a movie contains a scene with the obvious intention to have things flying around and a pseudo-platform NES game going on, the only thing I can thin of is the ancient first game featuring Star Fox. Sorry, I just can't handle that, and while I'm certain that I'll enjoy the movie on DVD numerous times in the future, those parts will leave me utterly cold. No. Just no. 3D, at its current form, is a needless, redundant and an annoying gimmick. Please, just don't do it. Please.

On the positive side, Gollum was portrayed perfectly for the purpose of the whole series (including LotR itself of course), and I did in a strange way enjoy the way it was made as an adaptation of a fairy tale rather than as a sequel/prequel to the main trilogy itself. The book has a wholly different feel than the LotR trilogy, and the movie indeed maintained that to an unbelievable degree.

And the ending, with Smaug's eye? Perfect...

I agree. Gollum was imo the best thing about that movie. I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd liked, but there were a few amazing scenes like that one that made it worthwhile nevertheless. At other times it was kinda dragging. I watched it drunk though so my judgement might be impaired. In 3D I might add, which yes, was pretty unnecessary.

Answering a question with a question to attempt to imply equivalence between our comments. Hilarious. Notice I'm not taking issue with Under_Starmere's criticsm of the film, as what he said had substance and made sense, even though I disagree with it. At least everyone in this thread already knows not to take your opinions seriously. I wonder why you even post here.

Yeah, I gotta admit it doesn't look too bad. Looks like it at least has some balls to it, and if nothing else it at least will have cool horror imagery and settings. I just don't think they can best the original. And frankly I don't really trust Sam Raimi to do well by us anymore.

They won't beat the original, but Raimi's made consistently good and entertaining stuff. The only real scary thing for me in this movie's creation is that Raimi's script was rewritten by, of all people, Diablo fucking Cody.

Dude, I can't even take you seriously with all of your atrocious spelling, logical fallacies and hilariously childish personal attacks. If you want to have a discussion about the structural flaws in Rian Johnson's beat-free, overly antagonistic dialog or the fact that Brick is basically just a standard David Goodis plot soldered onto Dashiell Hammett mechanics (and then of course made "quirky" by setting it in a modern day highschool), fucking fine. But check your unearned, condescending attitude at the door.

I'm currently writing the Ad Hominem theme song in honour of this thread. Malice In Wonderland: the existence of this movie is unecessary. A poor "gritty" adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with nothing memorable or noteworthy happening. There really isn't much to say. Just a boring story, boringly filmed, boring ending, mediocre acting. All in all, not offensively terrible but a waste of time.

Not even a sexy adaptation.

The only truly sexy adaptation of Alice is the Alice in Wonderland musical porno from the 70s.

Doesn't Alice in Wonderland hold the record for the greatest number of porn adaptations for any book ever? Which is creepily pederastic when you think about it; isn't Alice supposed to be... like... seven?

Ah well; knowing Lewis Carroll's generally odd... tendencies (which may have included paedophilia), I can't help but think he would posthumously approve.

Well the musical version is the only one I personally know of. I've no doubt there are a crapton of them online if I go looking hard enough. The hilarious yet kinda creepy thing about the musical porno is that the songs in it are not only memorable, but they sound like songs that should be in a children's movie.

There's such a thing as musical porn?

When it comes to Alice adaptations, I'd be interested to see what a film version of the "American McGee's Alice" games (coincidentally, origin of my favourite Halloween costume) would look like - though I suppose that every being realised is quite unlikely, given the way the rights have been passed from owner to owner. I know, I know, game adaptations... still; given the right director, it could work.

Well they were very much in the process of making one 7 or 8 years ago, right down to releasing promo shots of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Alice. I personally would love to see it go back into production. It was a great game with a great concept.

Yeah, though unfortunately the project's been passed around from studio to studio; Gellar herself supposedly (rumour) bought the rights at one point. I do hope it'll get off the ground one day.

Oh, I can one-up this. Observe.

Oh, wow. Just when I thought the 70s couldn't get any better. And they say the internet age has the weirdest porn... (Note: not a challenge; sorry for lowering the level of debate there).

This reminds me of a really weird film that a friend of mine keeps showing at parties - something like The Muppets but far, far dirtier; can't think of the name, for the life of me.

Meet The Feebles? Sprung from the depraved mind of Peter Jackson, crazy as it may sound...

Yes, that's it! Thanks! I think... at least I won't be going crazy trying to remember the name anymore.

One typo is "atrocious spelling" Good job not actually addressing any of my actual points yet again, though. But in case you haven't noticed, calling my posts ad hominems and personal attacks is ridiculous, because I have never been arguing with your opinion; my issue has been with you and your behavior in this thread the whole time. I'm going to tell you bluntly, either shape up or ship out. There's nothing wrong with disliking films other people like or expressing a negative opinion, but if you're going to spend so much time throwing grenades and calling anyone who doesn't agree with you stupid, you're going to do it somewhere else. Finally in this last post you actually barely start to describe what you actually dislike about the movie in question, even if I had to drag it screaming from you. I warned you about this before. When you come back, I expect that to be the norm from you.


The irony of this statement is...well, it's just wonderful.

That movie is hilarious. As much as I enjoy Peter Jackson since he's become a big A-list director, I would love it if he did another splatter comedy like Dead Alive or another depraved festival of offending people like Meet the Feebles.

Don't forget Bad Taste!

He should definitely go back and make another movie like Bad Taste, so good. Movies like that just seem like a lot of fun to make, too. Sam Raimi seems to be doing that with the Evil Dead, so maybe Jackson will want to do the same after the Hobbit business is over? I doubt either would be able to recapture the exact feel of the originals, but considering both have enough money and clout to do basically whatever they want these days, I'm sure any remakes/sequels/throwbacks would be entertaining at the very least.

Well with the Evil Dead remake, Raimi and Bruce Campbell have said in the past that they weren't gonna try and recreate the feel of the original. Aside from the "duh" things that would be in the movie, like the first person view from the "Evil", the tree rape (which actually looks like it's gonna be more explicit than the original), and just the general premise, the trailers show that it's definitely gonna be different, mainly in that it looks like they're going for a straight splatter exploitation film. Bruce also said that it's not gonna be campy at all, that they're playing it straight, and the trailer also shows that, at least to me it does. It seriously looks freaky at times in the trailer.

In terms of the violence level that will be in it though, I do think that the film will be better paced than other gross out splatter movies of the here and now, such as the Saw sequels which just immediately smack you in the head with buckets of blood and guts. Since Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and the original movie's producer Robert Tapert are all producers on this, I think the film will have a bit more of an older vibe to it when it comes to story structure and pacing. It really doesn't seem like this movie's gonna immediately start with someone's innards spilling out all over the ground and similar gory tactics that Saw II-VII did to gain attention. Raimi definitely knows better than that.

Personally I would like another Peter Jackson effort in the style of The Frighteners as that is my favourite work of his. Perfect mixture of humour and dread. Jeffrey Combs is superb as an off the wall antagonist and it's nice to see Michael J. Fox in a darker, more quirky role. I can't really get into his other stuff. The trailers and clips of Braindead and Bad Taste haven't sold me, I don't like that the wacky humour is at the forefront. I'm a fan of the Evil Dead trilogy though so maybe I might enjoy them, I was apprehensive on my first viewings of 2 and 3 with the comedy being far more prevalent but I grew to enjoy them.

I doubt it will happen. Examples being the overblown, melodramatic style of King Kong and The Lovely Bones. It's like Lord of the Rings changed him to where everything has to be bigger and more powerful than before. A little fun throwaway horror film is beneath him unless he were to serve as a producer. Whereas Sam Raimi seems to genuinely love gross out horror/comedies as seen recently with Drag Me To Hell.

I haven't seen The Lovely Bones but I hated his version of King Kong. Way too overblown, and most of the characters were totally unlikable (except for the heroine). Also it couldn't decide whether to be a gritty, realistic depiction of the King Kong story or an exaggerated, fantastical one. On the former end you have pretty much all the scenes leading up to them landing on the island, then on the island itself you get hit with ridiculous "evil" islanders and enough silly monsters to fill a hundred Z-grade sci-fi and horror movies. Dinosaurs I could have bought, but giant flesh-eating crickets? Fucking come on, Peter Jackson. Also I really don't like Adrien Brody in general.

You should at least pirate Bad Taste or something, it's fairly short and entertaining throughout. You might not love it, but I doubt you'll be bored. I should see the Frighteners myself, I haven't yet.

Both Bad Taste and Dead Alive are probably up on Youtube in full, so I'd say to look there before torrenting them.

King Kong was 2 hours too long, it's not bad, but god, sometimes Jackson should cut his movies. I thought The Hobbit was too long too, I expect the 2nd movie to be full of fillers and a total cashgrab.

Also, I just finished my LOTR extended version boxset and I must say the longer versions are much better. It feels more complete for a non reader and I have no idea why Jackson removed Saruman's scene in Return or Aragorn's scene where he says his age to Eowyn. I'm perhaps only a geek, but I think many scenes are important for the enjoyment of the movie. These extended versions are now the only way I'll enjoy LOTR, no way around it.

I think I suffered some kind nausea when I watched King Kong. I was zoning in and out every ten minutes wondering if I was watching a graphics card test or an actual movie. All I remember is Jack Black's teary eyed face looking at me.

I've give 'em a watch at some point. I don't want to miss something that could potentially be good.

I remember myself and my dad going to the theater when it came out to go see it. Every single screening of it was sold out. We saw Cheaper by the Dozen 2 instead.

That movie sucked. Don't watch it. Ever.

Lovely Bones was pretty lame, but I don't know what you all are talking about with Jackson's King Kong. That shit was awesome. Totally epic, masterful stuff. Just one of those sweeping adventure tales that I was completely caught up in; very adventurous. Naomi Watts was really good, Jack Black was great and the scope and size of the whole thing really worked, moved along like a charm for me personally. It is weird to me how he went from making stuff like Dead Alive to making King Kong and LotR later - it's sort of the movie-equivalent of Savatage, who went from raw USPM to classically inspired progressive rock over the course of a decade and a half. Interesting.

Side note, I've still never sat through all the LotR movies. The Frighteners and Meet the Feebles look like fun.

As for Raimi, Drag Me to Hell sucked. I don't care how many people liked it, I still think it sucked. Lame try-hard humor that was more eye-rolling than anything else; certainly nothing like the hilarious camp in Evil Dead 2-3.

Some stuff I've seen lately:

Traffic - 3.25/5

A long, long, long movie about drugs and stuff. Very well made, with some great shots, great acting here and there and a wide scope, but mostly it was just long and felt like a big PSA about drugs rather than a compelling story. Michael Douglas is great as per usual, and some of the other actors do a good job, but I just couldn't get invested in most of this. Maybe if it was like, an hour and a half shorter, it would have been a little more gripping. But I kinda doubt it.

Beasts of the Southern Wild - 4.5/5

A raw sort of film about a small rural village community racked by what our young protagonist Hushpuppy deems "the end of the world," as a host of tides flood their land and force them to uproot. This is a short movie, only a little above 90 minutes (which is pretty short these days), but it doesn't waste them - the narration from lead actress Quvenzhané Wallis is superb and combines with the stark directing to make a kind of poetry of images and sounds, allowing the film to flow quite beautifully. The main attraction is Dwight Henry as the father though, as he delivers this really great, unhinged performance, coloring and shading a relationship with his daughter that hovers between love and complete mania. This whole thing goes by so quickly that I wished it could have been longer to have more time to flesh out its themes, but as is, Beasts of the Southern Wild doesn't cheapen itself by over-explaining with the dialogue or adding in too many gratuitous emotional hooks. It's honest and bare for the world.

ParaNorman - 4.25/5

A light hearted Pixar romp about a boy who can see ghosts and uses his powers to help save the town from the wrath of a particularly vengeful scorned witch from the Salem days. This is a clever movie that develops some really memorable, strong characters and some very funny moments. The pace is brisk and entertaining and the story, while not complex, is more layered than it lets on - I wish they had spent a little more time on the social satire with



But mostly this was just a solid, enjoyable film with no real flaws outside of just not reaching for the extra mile and becoming great. This won't make you forget Toy Story or UP or anything but it's a cool movie and kids will get a kick out of it.

Moonrise Kingdom - 5/5

I was surprised at this because the only other Wes Anderson movie I've ever seen is The Life Aquatic with blah blah blah, which was a big pretentious, shapeless blob of nothing that I pretty much hated. This movie, however, is awesome. It's pretentious, and I took about the first half hour to get past the oddly stoic delivery of dialogue that Anderson seems to find hilarious (but is mostly just odd more than anything), but at the core of Moonrise Kingdom is a beautiful, vivid story about two estranged, out of place kids finding a niche in the world for themselves. The scenes with lead actors Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward alone are some of the best I've seen all year, as these two are great actors and sell the odd, whimsical and fantastical atmosphere of this whole thing with class. The scenes with the adults are more campy, and although Bruce Willis gives one of the weaker performances of his career here, Ed Norton makes up for that in being absolutely first-rate here with his wide-eyed boy scout demeanor and innocent delivery - he's just an A class actor. Mostly what I liked about this was the indescribably positive yet bizarre fairy-tale like feel this whole thing has...usually this kind of quirkiness wouldn't really endear me, but Moonrise Kingdom grabs it by the balls and takes it all the way, never wimping out on delivery and being 100% solid in conviction the whole way through. This is the kind of movie that tells everyone who ever felt left out or alone that there is a light in the dark, and although that might sound hammy when you're just reading those words on a computer screen, Anderson shows what he can do with a powerful script and scenes that veer between comedic and arresting in a mad waltz to form what is probably my favorite movie of 2012 so far. Go see it even if you have doubts.

Agreed on Moonrise Kingdom, fantastic movie. Darkening probably watch Anderson's films when he feel like puking, but I truly adore him. Bruce Willis was cool in this too and Norton is always pretty good. With some hindsight, it will probably rank as one of his best movies. You should watch The Darjeeling Limited again, Empy, I like this one a lot.

Not Pixar. Good movie, though. I especially loved the twist at the end where The plot was quite original too, despite being filled with what on the surface appear to be cliches: kid who can see ghosts, zombies, a centuries-old curse that returns to plague a town, etc. The movie does things with all of them that end up not being what you expect, though.

Having watched the second half of A Serbian Film again (everything from right before the newborn scene onward), and still remembering the first half of the movie, I will reiterate my stance on it: A Serbian Film is an insanely well made movie. It's incredibly well shot, the acting is absolutely superb, it looks gritty and fucked up despite being filmed with modern technology, and it's an incredibly effective "absolutely terrify the watcher" movie. That being said, it's the only movie I've ever watched that legitimately disgusts me. The violence isn't really the thing about it, as I've watched countless gore films and not been fazed. It's the simple fact that it was made. It's the newborn scene that really does it for me. Not only is that without a doubt the absolute worst scene I've ever seen in a movie on a purely moralistic standpoint, but it has desensitized me to pretty much everything related to graphic splatter violence I will watch in the future, and remember that I'm not someone that is shocked easily. The ending as well is just way too fucking much for me.

As said, incredibly well made movie, but it's just completely disgusting to everything within me.

I didn't like it either but it definitely shows that he's more than eager to get back into that style. I think he'll make the safe/blockbusters with the off beat horror in a semi-equal dose from now on, he's got to rely on the pay-check after all.

I want to see ParaNorman, there aren't enough of those good all-ages clay animation films.

I've been hearing great things about Moonrise Kingdom and I really don't see the appeal from the surface. It just seems like the same left of centre ensemble run-around in a different setting, maybe there's something special about this that deserves my attention. I haven't really liked any of Wes Anderson's films, I mean, The Darjeerling Limited had it's moments but it was filled with wasted potential where it could have been funny or deeply insightful, instead it just coasted along a banal line to the finish. Rushmore is one which I can honestly say I enjoyed, Bill Murray had enough material to humour me and there wasn't a large array of characters to get too distracted or lost with, like with Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

I think Raimi has enough money from the Spider Man movies to retire several times over. Once you get to that level of fame and success, you continue to do what you do what you love it, even if you can just stop because you'll be financially set for the rest of your life and then some.

Yeah no doubt he's filthy rich but you have to think how much money he's spending as a producer, and if any of those projects fail or don't make enough then he'll be losing more than he's making. I think funding a potential bomb such as the Evil Dead remake shows that he has the money to splurge. I personally think since the Spider Man films he's maintained the attitude of investing in a bankable movie and then a risky project, it seems that way to me.