The Official Last Movie You Saw Thread (Part 2)

[KevinHall]

Me and the wife went to see Big Eyes over the weekend. Really good movie. Amy Adams and Christopher Waltz both have really good performances. I have read that both may receive Academy Award nominations for their roles in this movie.

[jpay]

Annabelle, Good little scary movie. Some serious chills. Not for the kiddies

[TrueblueCATfan]

Saw WILD over the Holidays...love the true story movies..Reese Witherspoon was excellent

[KCKUKFan]

Wild - Reese Witherspoon puts in an excellent performance, both emotionally and physically in this tale of a young woman trying to piece her life back together as she hikes alone through the Pacific wilderness. One of the better films I've seen this year; it reminds me of "Into The Wild," but Witherspoon's character isn't as selfish and unlikeable as the McCandless kid that the Sean Penn movie was based off of. Surely she will be nominated for an Oscar... 3.5/4.

Speaking of Oscars...

Foxcatcher - Steve Carell is almost a shoo-in for his first Acadamy Award in a nearly unrecognizable turn as billionaire creep/bird biologist/wrestling coach/murderer John Dupont. The movie is good -- not great -- but Carell is hypnotizing in a truly transformative role. See it for the performance. Definitely not a feel-good flick. 3/4.

[Joneslab]

Into the Woods.

This was my daughter's pick. She's seven. I've never enjoyed musicals, what with the massive suspension of disbelief that's going on that normal people break into song. So I was cynical going in. And for 3/4 of its running time, this bored me. Once you get past the very cool idea of mashing up fairy tales, Into the Woods turns stale. The songs were repetitive and the characters stock--there are characters in this movie, for instance, who simply bled out of the narrative in the last 20 minutes.

But in the last five minutes of this, the whole thing is explained. I knew the whole thing--the plot, the songs, the fairy tales themselves--was a metaphor, but I didn't know how the metaphor was going to work. Then it's explained and I had a deeper appreciation for the movie.

Still, I can't say that I enjoyed it. I've liked similar movies--Enchanted, Frozen--much better. If you want characters breaking into song, then watch Pitch Perfect. But the conceit the movie revolves around is highly interesting. Too bad you have to wait an hour and forty minutes to get there.

[Spiritof96]

Saw the Second Hobbit movie. (not the one currently in theaters) When it was like the book I loved it, when it was a nonsensical cartoon that departed from the book, I hated it. Smaug was cool.

[Joneslab]

The One I Love.

The great Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss in a rom-com wherein the couple is sent by their therapist (played by Ted Danson) on a getaway weekend to rekindle their marriage. On the weekend they run into another version of themselves, and from that point on the movie becomes a kind of inversion of the Doppelganger film.

My problem with this is that it seemed to sort of settle between genres. Part sci-fi, part thriller, part romantic comedy--it never really gets into any groove and just sort of flounders around. The performances are excellent--especially Duplass, who's always great--but the movie was just there for me. Not funny enough, not scary enough, not weird enough.

Skip it.

[JFCats22]

^

Mark Duplass is one of my favorites. I have heard similar to what you said - he is great, but wait for it on DVD

[TrueblueCATfan]

Got a few new ones coming up to see...Taken 3 and American Sniper

[surveyor]

In this installment of the "Taken" movies, Mills is after the guys who kidnapped Itzhak Stern...............

[Blue Heaven]

American Sniper- Wow what a great character study of the life of Chris Kyle. Not really a war movie though the battle scenes were really well done. This really gets into the life of Kyle and how the war molded not only him but his family as well. It's a sad movie because you know how his life plays out but Eastwood only touched on his demise. The book was an excellent read so I was anxious to see if he portrayed Kyle like the hard boiled patriotic soldier that he was and he nailed it, as did Bradley Cooper. Cooper entrenched himself as Kyle and he shouild at least get an Oscar nod. This is the best Clint Eastwood directed film I have seen and it's the best movie I have seen in a while. This is a movie that will stick with you for a while and that's the sign of a great movie. Highly recommended.

[Joneslab]

I want to see American Sniper, Birdman, and a few others.

Not sure it was a great year for movies. Seems like the movies that people thought were going to be huge (Interstellar) fell short, and the movies that early critics pegged as masterpieces (Birdman, Foxcatcher) fell a little short when the masses got to see them.

The Oscar nominations were released yesterday, and there's a bunch I haven't seen. The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I did see, got a few nominations but I actually didn't like it as much as some of his other movies.

Was disappointed that the brilliant The Lego Movie wasn't nominated for Best Animated Movie.

[TrueblueCATfan]

American Sniper- Wow what a great character study of the life of Chris Kyle. Not really a war movie though the battle scenes were really well done. This really gets into the life of Kyle and how the war molded not only him but his family as well. It's a sad movie because you know how his life plays out but Eastwood only touched on his demise. The book was an excellent read so I was anxious to see if he portrayed Kyle like the hard boiled patriotic soldier that he was and he nailed it, as did Bradley Cooper. Cooper entrenched himself as Kyle and he shouild at least get an Oscar nod. This is the best Clint Eastwood directed film I have seen and it's the best movie I have seen in a while. This is a movie that will stick with you for a while and that's the sign of a great movie. Highly recommended.

I can't wait....wanting to see this ever since I saw the previews

[Joneslab]

American Sniper- Wow what a great character study of the life of Chris Kyle. Not really a war movie though the battle scenes were really well done. This really gets into the life of Kyle and how the war molded not only him but his family as well. It's a sad movie because you know how his life plays out but Eastwood only touched on his demise. The book was an excellent read so I was anxious to see if he portrayed Kyle like the hard boiled patriotic soldier that he was and he nailed it, as did Bradley Cooper. Cooper entrenched himself as Kyle and he shouild at least get an Oscar nod. This is the best Clint Eastwood directed film I have seen and it's the best movie I have seen in a while. This is a movie that will stick with you for a while and that's the sign of a great movie. Highly recommended.

According to another board there's a brief mention of Kentucky basketball. In one of the scenes a Kentucky game is on. Patrick Sparks is mentioned by name.

Did you catch this?

[Joneslab]

Birdman.

Michael Keaton in a magically realistic mash-up of a superhero movie, a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, and a Raymond Carver Broadway adaptation.

The first 30 minutes of this are almost heartbreakingly good. Some of the most inventive, amazing stuff I've seen at the movies in a long time. You've never seen an opening like this.

Then the conceit wears off and the movie loses a lot of its momentum. In the last half-hour some of the secondary characters just go away. The movie starts to kind of spin its wheels and we get long moments of just looking at Keaton's face. We get an ending that's not satisfying and some final scenes that take the movie into an area of near-silliness.

But still, those first thirty minutes. Keaton's incredible performance. That amazing jazz score. For these reasons I recommend this--but man, it could have been a masterpiece.

[Spiritof96]

It looks bazaar.