I was really disappointed by this sequel. I enjoyed the first movie as it developed the theme of polishing a diamond in the rough, an unlikely but likeable hero, with wit and clever direction and writing. This second film did the opposite, it celebrated the crass and the writing was bad - there were huge holes in the story lines, and the character arches were undeveloped or fractured by missing/unwritten elements. The heros and villians were silly without comedic intent. The only bright spots were Taron Epstein, Mark Strong and Haille Berry's rapport, and Jeff Bridges. Colin Firth's character was butchered by the writers, Elton John' s part was unnecessary, unexplained and poorly executed, This movie is just BAD, and a waste of time. I give it a 3 (bad) out of 10. [Comedy?, Action, Adventure, Spy}
"Every time someone steps up and says who they are the world becomes a better, more interesting place, so thank you." <3<3<3
25th Hour tells the story of Monty Brogan's last day of freedom. He was convicted to 7 years in prison for drug dealing.
Edward Norton plays Monty and he never disappoints me. He is always capable of doing a great emotional performance. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper play Monty's best friends, both gave very strong performances.
There are such remarkable scenes in this film like the powerful "make me ugly" scene. Barry Pepper together with Norton made that scene so authentic, it's beautiful and the amazing "mirror" scene where Norton blames basicaly everyone in the world for his fate. The final scene is also powerful, when a father dreams about a much brighter future for his son.
The connection with 9/11 events are very strong. New York City like Monty, will never be the same again. He can't run away from his fate, he can't undone his mistakes in life, he really is going to prison. It's real.
Great cast. Important story, well told. I give it an 8.5 (great re-telling). I have to confess that a couple of times this year I've been a little taken aback by dramas produced as period pieces, when I can distinctly remember seeing the events televised live. The things that remind me that I'm an old woman.
Ouch.
The visuals are breathtaking, as already shown by the trailers.
ScarJo is trying, you can tell that she wants this to be her new franchise.
It's edited quite nicely, it's got a (simple) story, and it's coherent.
So where did it go wrong?
One of the problems is that it takes away all of the philosophical depth from the original.
Well, that means you can still enjoy it from a simple action flick perspective, right?
Good luck with that.
This film has such a ridiculous amount of exposition, that it badly hurts the enjoyment of the film.
Many sequences consist of characters just talking to each other, and explaining the plot.
Things are definitely shown, but then the filmmakers don't think we're able to put two and two together, and hence add another explanatory scene.
As a result of that, the film doesn't take its time to develop the characters, meaning you won't care about them.
Top it off with an awful performance from Juliette Binoche, and you have your modern style over substance film.
3.5/10
Probably never seen that many proposals, marriages and pregnancies in one film, but I loved it!
Holy shit that was a waste of time. And i even skipped a bit
Well, anoyone who knows the history of Scotland knows that David Rizzio (Riccio) was murdered in front of Queen Mary (Stabbed multiple times). Good thing that the show producers stick to the history facts and didn't alter it, even though it is very sad to see. But everyone knew it was coming anyways. This episode was good! everything about it was good. I liked the song played when Mary was hiding to meet with Rizio and Lord Bothwell also the one when she was escaping with Lord Darnley :)
The episode did not disappoint, as usual. I very much enjoyed it! Can't wait to see what happens next regarding Mary :)
I realize there'll never be any sort of a romantic relationship between Mary and Darnley, but I want so bad for them to at least be allies. Why can't he stay a decent human being for more than a little while at a time? They could be so good for eachother if he wasn't such a power hungry jerk.
I'm diggin' this Archduke dude, I so hope he doesn't turn out to be a creep. Elizabeth would be so much more chill if she were to find love with someone of her station. I do wonder what will happen to Gideon now, though.
And Henri is such a cocky, overconfident a-hole. I love him!
I wanted to love this so much, but it just felt... Empty. The characters didn't connect at all and the Fantastic Beasts themselves felt like an afterthought to the franchise they're actually trying to build.
Overall a watchable movie with some charming moments but damaged by a muddy story and atrocious pacing. I expected more from the HP universe.
I'm a big fan of Pixar films, but this new animated division of Disney, which crafted Moana, is superb. The quality of the art is clean and georgeous. The personal idiocyncristic movements that capture each character are reminiscent of the work of the great animator Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away). This animated movie is a gem, must see movie. Beyond it's technical excellence, the story is full and unique. Disney gets a new princess (OK... Chief's daughter). Children get two new songs with which to drive their parents crazy and replace Frozen (on repeat). The Asian Pacific is brought to life. Both children and adults will love this picture. I'm a fan. I give it a 10 (spectacular) out of 10.
I loved it, but I didn't like the fact that their older selves looked NOTHING like their younger selves, so that just ruined the ending for me. It's a typical asian nostalgic movie, which is a genre I love.
7.5/10. Dan Harmon, creator of Community is known for several things -- his trademark bottle of vodka, his tendency to spill his guts to audiences full of strangers, but also his story circle. The story circle is a device that Harmon uses as a blueprint for nearly any story he writes or supervises. It offers a series of steps to telling a story: 1. A character is in a zone of comfort; 2. But they want something; 3. They enter an unfamiliar situation; 4. Adapt to it; 5. Get what they wanted; 6. Pay a heavy price for it; 7. Then return to their familiar situation; 8. Having changed.
Brooklyn is basically Story Circle: The Movie. Eilis may not have the best life in Ireland, but she is comfortable there. But she hopes and wants for a better life than she can expect to have in the Emerald Isle. So she moves to Brooklyn, a situation whose unfamiliarity is hammered home from the first Irish immigrant she meets on the boat, to her fellow boarders who snip at her a bit, but also guide her through her new surroundings. She slowly but surely grows accustomed to her new home, with its different social mores and customs. She eventually has a good job, a future in accounting, a boyfriend, and the good life her sister wanted for her when she helped send Eilis to America. But just as she grows comfortable in that new life, she pays the price not being able to be home for her sister's funeral or to comfort her mother in person. Eventually, she's able to return home, but as the film makes clear in its third act, she is much different person now then when she left it.
That's not meant to be a criticism of the film. That type of adherence to story structure does lead to a film that feels conventional, and in truth Brooklyn is a feel-good story that is as interested in a film experience that feels like slipping into a warm bath as it is in proceeding through its simple-but-sweet coming of age tale. The notes are familiar, but the melody is beautiful, and the audience goes home happy.
At one point, Eilis offers her beau, Tony, an adjective to describe herself -- amenable. And it's the perfect way to describe Brooklyn It's a very amenable film, happy to lean into the soft hues of the past to tell a love story, and immigrant story, and a bildungsroman, in gentle tones that provoke smiles and sighs as Eilis finds happiness, love, and fulfillment despite her initial reservations and homesickness.
If I have a criticism, its that Eilis's journey is almost too successful. For all the accusations of unrealistic perfection leveled at Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Eilis is a paragon of good fortune throughout Brooklyn. Nearly everyone she meets in Ireland and in Brooklyn short of the prickly Miss Kelly likes her and helps her to feel more comfortable in whatever her current surroundings are. To boot, she becomes successful at nearly whatever she sets her mind to, from working at the department story, to courting, to her burgeoning skills as a bookkeeper.
But that's not to say Eilis does not face challenges in the film. Hers are challenges of conscience rather than the standard plot obstacles we expect our cinematic protagonists to leap over. The crux of the film is Eilis returning to the land that she thought had nothing there for her, and finding that she was wrong, that there is good work, and friendship, and family, and a nice boy with a good future. Suddenly, the life she forged across the pond, the one with her husband, and her studies, and seems distant, something that unexpectedly has to compete with the renewed comforts of home. The choice the film stakes out -- whether to take the stronger, more confident persona Eilis has built back to Ireland and start a life there better than any she hoped to be able to enjoy, or return to the place that made her into that stronger person with the man she pledged her love to.
The problem is that as well as the film sets up that choice, and lays out compelling elements on both sides of the equation, it glosses over the conclusion in a somewhat unsatisfying fashion. While the touch of Miss Kelly's would-be blackmail is nice, it seems abrupt that after all the time the film spends setting up Eilis's hometown as somewhere that Eilis has a place and could be happy, one harsh woman is enough to send her back to New York. There's subtext about an iron fist hiding beneath the velvet glove that's been offered to Eilis since she returned to Enniscorthy, but it's hard to see it anyone besides Miss Kelly, with everyone else in the town seeming a bit pushy and presumptive, but also genuinely enamored with the young Ms. Lacey. Her confession to her mother is a quietly powerful scene, and the breakup letter she gives to her Irish beau feels like too easy way to resolve that relationship, but more than anything, it just feels odd that one mean old crow is all it takes to convince Eilis that she could never have a life in a place that, despite the vows she's tried so hard to put out of her mind, seemed to welcome her with open arms.
Still, the scene where Tony finds Eilis waiting for him and the pair embrace is a sweet moment, even if it doesn't feel totally earned given what motivated Eilis to come to that point. But it's a lovely image in a film full of them. Brooklyn is awash in muted pastels and primary colors, that give the past a gauzy hue that catches the eye and conveys the sense of a sweeter, simpler time. It's also a supremely well-shot film, that shoots Eilis and Jim Farrell at the beach having a conversation with their romantic companions framed in between them in the distance, conveying the subtext of the exchange. It's also a film keen to use subtle touches to show changes in Eilis's mood or perspective, from the simple act of wearing her bathing suit under her clothes that impresses her friends back home, to the letters she shoves in a drawer to signify the way in which she's putting Brooklyn out of her mind. None of these techniques is so subtle that the viewer will miss them, but the film takes the old admonition "show don't tell" to heart, and succeeds well with that principle in mind.
In the end, Brooklyn is a fairly simple story. Girl leaves home. Girl makes a new life with success and romance. Girl returns home, seeing the beauty of what she left behind and has to choose her new life or her old one. But the film's pleasures come from the sweet stillness of the moments in between, of the temping worlds the film creates on either side of Eilis, in the recognizable steps of maturation, of change, that Eilis goes through as she moves past her homesickness, past her reticence, and eventually, past the girl she used to be. Brooklyn is an aggressively amiable film, that breaks little new ground, but covers the familiar territory with such a pleasant, charming air, that it can be forgiven for making few new steps.
"Oh God, he can't stand. The ovation is insensitive, everybody down!" was genius and hysterical.
So were many comments made regarding similar topics and social concepts entertaining. Like the ramp thing.
If it can keep this up I sense a great new comedy show.
I also really, really like the reactions of the audience over at IMDB and RT for this pilot.
People claiming this is offensive and disgusting to make fun of a handicapped person like they allegedly do here.
I hate it, when you criticise something and someone else says to you, you mistunderstood it. Especially in anime this is an annyoing comeback to any criticism. If you don't like Minnie Driver and find her overbearing here, sure, okay. That's one thing.
But I think in this case it is pretty obvious that the comedy pokes fun at how we perceive disabled people and treat them. How we claim we want them to be included but exclude them even more as a society. By complaining how offensive this is, you do the same thing. It's the classic issue: should we include a person with a specific attribute by making fun of something regarding it or should we not, to not point that attribute out but exclude that person in the process and handle that person special that way?
Example for criticial undertones:
The school is for inclusion. So they got rid off the male-sexual-aggression-Viking mascot. It could be a reference to 3rd wave feminism. Because everything slightly "too male" is automatically considered bad and needs to be changed to not offend anyone.
The ramp thing in the back of the building by the dumpsters: inclusion by separating wheelchair and non-wheelchair, letting the former sneak in out of sight.
The ovation thing (and making him a candidate for president) references those paradox situations as well. A "don't offend anyone" mentality where you accidentally do stuff that could be considered offensive nevertheless, even if the opposite is your actual intention. While it's not necessarily pointed out by the person that should be offended but by others "for" them.
The AV club has a good review for the first two episodes
http://www.avclub.com/review/speechless-delightful-addition-abcs-stable-family--242882
The Finest Hours, Disney’s (yes) old-school recreation of “the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Rescue” starring Chris Pine and Casey Affleck who portray the generations ingenuity and sensibilities as they are thrown into the usual genre tropes of unwavering disaster and relief.
The film is a parallel story of daring from Pine’s straight-shooting, small-town Coast Guard coxswain, Bernie Webber, and Affleck’s tanker engineer, Raymond Sybert, separately thrust into roles of authority amidst overwhelming danger. Although a man of few words, Affleck, makes his character the most interesting on screen.
The main premise of the story is on a February night, not one, but two oil tankers have been sheared in two. Most rescue teams have gone to one ship, when news of the seconds reaches Pendleton. The Chatham Coastguards new station boss Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana), orders Webber and a small crew into the storm on what is described the local fisherman as a suicide mission, but Webber, with something to prove to his past sets out.
The tanker sliced in two, and with little hope of survival, Sybert has become the captain of sorts to the surviving crew; although many are not keen to follow his orders. Like Webber, he is an outsider, his home is his ship. In one of the most interesting scenes Sybert responds to a shipmate who dismisses him for being a lonely man with no family, after saving his life, responds with the simple “I’ve got a life just the same as you”. Syberts side of the story is a series of ingenious ideas to help buy as much as time for someone, whoever might be out there, to rescue the him and the crew.
Most of the remaining story follows Webber battling through the storm, but the visuals are far from impressive, large waves in just a sea of blackness, but perhaps this is all you have of evidence of a storm at sea? The 3D adds further unnecessary darkness, and no real depth.
The film is a nice touch to the story and certainly an enjoyable watch, if only to wonder what could be next for Webber, and what brilliant idea Sybert might come up with next.
A solid 8/10 and a recommendation to see in 2D only.
Derek should not have lasted this long with drag this terrible! And so mean on top of that? Bye guuurl, good riddance!
Oh I am soooooo glad they kicked Acid Betty to the curb! Lawdamercy... couldn't stand her snarky, superior, arrogant self. Yay for Bob The Drag Queen!!
I can't believe on those runway looks. Seriously, Madonna has over 30 years of career and everyone do gueisha?
Acid Betty rolls her eyes so much in this episode, I thought they would stay at the back of her head and never come back.
worst episode in drag race history
I know it's terribly predictable to quip "the book is better", but it is. None of the actors fit right, the scene transitions are terrible- unnecessarily choppy like every other scene was deleted, and the parts that are suppose to be comic relief are so obviously set up to be comic relief they fall flat.
Original, most likely impressive for the time, but not my cup of tea.
What is it about religion that blinds people to common sense? How is it possible that average people eat aphid shit off poplar trees, drink sewage leaking onto a statue, bathe in the Ganges river (immensely polluted), send their social security checks to charlatans in exchange for vials of water, withhold medical treatment for their CHILDREN opting instead to engage only in wishful thinking? Because those normally rational people will walk into traffic when wearing their blinding faith glasses.
Fireproof is a stale cow turd wrapped in the undeserved prestige of religion. One of the shouters on this movie record, shadowfeet, claims to have cried watching this movie; a movie that advocates domestic violence. Let me repeat in case you glossed over the last sentence. Fireproof advocates domestic violence and SOMEHOW has a reputation for being a movie full of good marital advice. I can not type this strongly enough: Fuck Kirk Cameron and his twisted world view.
To any person in a relationship who may have seen this movie: if your partner ever raises his or her hand against you that should be the last day you are together. Move out, leave, seek divorce, do whatever it takes to end that relationship. There is no fixing that relationship. To attempt the advice in this movie is sadistic.
My first thought when he got the bag was - why don't he make his own pills?
