At The Movies

Movie Day

52 Comments

Alright, I've got a little time to type something up here. Last night I watched this one...

The Last Days (Los últimos días)
2013, David and Alex Pastor

As I grow more cynical about big-budget film, it takes longer and longer every time I open Netflix to settle on something. Last night I got somewhat lucky with this movie which, despite plenty of problems, jumped out at me as a post-apocalyptic journey, which is something I'm always into.

The movie's absurdly stupid premise is that agoraphobia has gone viral due to a volcanic eruption. Thankfully, the filmmakers ask us to just go with it rather than attach some unlikely science. Anyone who goes outside ends up dying, which gets us farther from agoraphobia, but whatever. The rules are inconsistent; cars offer no protection but in a couple of scenes, several characters enjoy open windows and nothing happens. I forgave all this for a couple of reasons: one, it was rather well-acted. There are scads of extras in this film but only two or three characters important to the narrative. Two, it was artfully shot. Three, I liked the two lead characters so much that I truly wanted them to succeed in finding one's pregnant fiance, from whom he was separated when the world went to hell.

You'll have to shrug off some other nonsense - a GPS is used frequently and with pinpoint precision underground - but all in all, I'm typically glad when I make an unlikely selection, and this was no exception.

I have Django Unchained next up and otherwise the month's been light on film, heavy on video games and a couple of books. What have you seen, Citizens?

52 thoughts on “Movie Day”

  1. Is that jpg really necessary?

    Watched Heat, more for the soundtrack (Eno, Moby, etc) than for the movie, but besides DeNiro and Pacino boy were there a slew of names in this one -- close to 20 that I recognized. And interestingly enough, Danny Trejo's character is Trejo in this one.

    Saw Captain America: Winter Soldier at the $1 theater. Chris Evans has come a long way since The Fantastic Four. Seriously though, why don't people shoot at his exposed face or legs instead of the impenetrable metal shield?

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    Watched The Wolverine now that our new Uverse package has HBO. It was...fine.

    Started last night on The Darjeeling Limited. So far, so good. I also have MST3K: The Movie recorded for a rewatch. "Oh, they're flying into a Roger Dean album cover." "They're very into Yes on this planet."

  2. Anyone else see Maleficent yet?
    Dang, I thought I had another movie to discuss but I've forgotten it.

        1. Yes.

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  3. Not much in the way of movies. I watched The English Patient for the first time. I wasn't expecting much, but I liked it.

    I'm in season 2 of Scandal. There are times when I am really into it, and there are times when I have trouble suspending disbelief. I'll probably keep going because summer. And because I'm almost caught up with Mad Men.

    Spooky- you might appreciate this. I'm also working my way through 2004 ROH. Just watched Joe vs Punk II.

        1. Yup. I spent more money than I care to admit in the mid-2000's on ROH DVD's. That was before children, of course. Just pulled them out of storage in the last month.

    2. Scandal's second season has some really fun arcs. The suspension of disbelief is a constant companion, though.

      Season 3 sort of went off the rails for me. There were moments, but overall, it was just a collection of scenes that were begging for water cooler discussion.

      1. Most of the trouble I am having is with the President's character. He goes back and forth from being an idealist to a cynical womanizer. I know that dichotomy can exist (I'm reading about LBJ right now - that last sentence could describe him), but I'm just not buying him.

        1. Yeah, Fitz' big problem is that he exists only as a device, not a character. Character's can work like that, but when they're supposed to be one of the romantic leads, as well as the character that most of the show's plot revolves around in some way, you need something more than "okay, now we need him to be super-idealistic." Or "okay, now we need him to ignore everything he said last episode and be a total dickbag"

  4. I think I missed last month's Movie Day...

    * X-Men: Days of Future Past - Saw this around the beginning of June. Liked it more than anything I've seen this summer, though probably not at much as First Class.
    That Awkward Moment - Linds thought it would be good. I disagreed, but lost that argument. It was extremely horrible. Vile characters, lazy writing, and just overall not enjoyable or funny or witty or... anything, really.
    22 Jump Street - Hilarious in the same vein of 21 Jump Street. The credits sequence was great. Channing Tatum has excellent comedic timing.
    3 Days to Kill - My father-in-law thought it would be good. I disagreed. I was right. Boring and nonsensical. It was bizarre how it would bring up plot points, only to completely disregard them. Besides which, the whole thing was one of the choppiest movies I've ever seen. Definite "UPN Sunday Afternoon Movie" material.
    300: Rise of An Empire - All this really did was make me realize the the first 300 was almost certainly garbage. I'm not going back to find out. Somewhere in the range of 85% of this movie is in slo-mo.

    1. It makes me laugh that people would assume a movie called That Awkward Moment could be anything but horrible. I'm a cynic, sure, but c'mon.

      LOL at Rise of an Empire being 85% in slo-mo. I remember Hard Target (a Van Damme movie that not everyone will remember) was like that, and a few of my friends and I would watch it and just laugh. There would be slo-mo walking scenes. WALKING SCENES. I'm convinced the script was 25 pages long.

      And yeah, the first 300 was garbage. What I bothered to watch, anyway. It happened to be on in the break room one day.

  5. First three discs of Game of Thrones - Season One. I waited to watch this until I'd read as many of the books as it took to get ahead of the cable series (Read through A Feast for Crows in about 5 weeks and haven't had time to pick up A Dance with Dragons yet). I think it was a good choice, mostly because the characters are still fairly fresh in my head, enough so that I'm not wondering who each new person is or how they're interrelated. Not sure how much I'd like the show without the mental index of having read the books.

    Gravity - I enjoyed this one. Watched it on a fairly large screen with surround sound and was amazed at the cinematography. Not so amazed at the story, but pretty darn cool overall. I'll have to go back and read all of the spoilered content of past discussions.

    The Wolf of Wall Street - I don't know what I think about this one. I enjoyed the story and the acting was pretty compelling, but knowing that it was based on the actual felonious activities of a total dirtbag, and feeling like it was glorifying that lifestyle and trivializing/not even showing the effects on people he bilked, made it a little off-putting.

    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - This was a really fun movie. I don't care for the awkward humor Ben Stiller movies, but I really enjoyed the character and his journey.

    1. That's how I felt about "Gravity" - it was pretty to look at, but I didn't care much for the story.

    2. I share your thoughts on Wolf. For some reason I didn't feel the same way about Goodfellas.

  6. I watched Dazed & Confused for the first time ever last night. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I had unfairly judged the movie for years because of the obsession that my peers from the ages of 12-15 had for it, likely because people smoked weed. They didn't try to sell me on the nuance, those jerks.

    This weekend I watched Gimme the Loot which was fantastic. It's about two young graffiti artists scheming to bomb the apple in Citi Field. Definitely one of the best things I saw last year.

    I rented Under the Skin when I was sick. I'm glad I rented it rather than buying it since I'm not sure I'll ever want to watch it again. The first half is outstanding. The second half was... less good. The soundtrack is great and it's creepy throughout. But the ending was really upsetting. I recommend it as a one time watch, though.

    I also rented The Purge for some stupid reason. I always thought that the premise of the film was interesting, but didn't bother watching it because of the awful reviews. I now see why it was reviewed so terribly. I had low expectations but it somehow was even worse than I expected. Ugh.

  7. In the last few weeks, I got Sheenie hooked on LOST. It's fun going back and rewatching them.

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    Monsters University was, to me, better than the original.

    Homeland season 2 was much wobblier than season 1, but man do I love when Mandy Patinkin starts whispering like Inigo. I've been warned that season 3 gets even worse.

  8. Saw Once Upon a Time in the West a few weeks back. A little slow at times but still a classic western. Henry Fonda as a bad guy! I've also got The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in the queu. After that I think I'll be off my western kick. I can always watch my DVD of The Searchers if I need to scratch that itch again.

    Agree with above discussion of Gravity and Walter Mitty. Have a copy of The Wolf of Wall Street that's been sitting on DVD player for 6 weeks. Not sure if I want to get to it or not.

    Oh and I have found, much like FTLT, that dudes like Snowpiercer, their ladies? Not so much. Nibs maybe you can get back at Linds for her That Awkward Moment suggestion.

    1. We watched the trailer, not really having heard of it. I was very intruiged, she was not. I think I'd have a tough time getting that one by her.

      My brother worked on Walter Mitty, though I can't remember on exactly which part. I'd been dissuaded by reviews, but if you guys say it's worth watching, I usually try to watch stuff that he works on.

        1. Provided I'm not playing in the HCBA Softball League Championship (highly unlikely), I'll be taking this one in at St. Anthony Main on Tuesday evening if anyone cares to join me.

        2. It's also worth noting that the local cinema isn't showing it (or even planning to, to my knowledge), so I'd have to drive an hour to see it.

          I'll put it on the Netflix queue, more than likely.

    2. that dudes like Snowpiercer, their ladies? Not so much.

      The wife was the one that brought up Snowpiercer for watching. We haven't seen it yet however due in part to no theaters nearby showing it.

    3. Working in the industry that I do, it's going to take a huge boatload of disbelief to image a train remaining track-bound with no maintenance ad infinitum when railroads currently have to work their butts of to prevent derails in the even the best maintained right of ways. I have no problem with a perpetual motion powered locomotive, though.

  9. Over the weekend I watched Nebraska and The Lego Movie. Nebraska was fantastic. I loved the way they would reveal different "sides" of a character to make a more complete portrait. I didn't love the choice to use black and white, though I think I get why they did it. I adored the family reunion scenes.

    The Lego Movie was fun, and had a few laugh-out-loud moments, but I felt like it left a couple things on the shelf. I'm not quite sure what - maybe it needed another big musical number or something - but it was enjoyable. It probably would have been very cool to see on the big screen too, since the lego-animation was quite excellent.

  10. Saw movies over the weekend!

    * Navy Seals (the awful one with Charlie Sheen). I might have seen it back in the day, but either way, it was pretty bad.

    * National Treasure is as absurd and enjoyable (maybe a tick more absurd than enjoyable, but it's an equitable mix) as I remembered.

    * the new Planet of the Apes movie was...okay. I very much enjoyed the one that came out a couple years ago, but this one didn't hit the right notes. There were parts I enjoyed, and I'd go to another, but I'd hope that they'd tighten things up a bit - maybe leave a little bit of room for subtlety?

    1. Question about the Planet of the Apes movies... who are the protagonists? I mean, we know what's going to happen, right? I didn't see the first, and didn't have any desire to do so, despite my appreciation for sci-fi. But these things are quite popular. What wrong assumptions do I have?

      1. Caesar is meant to be the audience's primary sympathy and driving force behind the plot. The movies mostly bear this out, though both of them have human rooting interests, as well.

        Yes, it's a sort of foregone conclusion, but they're taking their time in getting there.

        1. The previews always make Caesar seem so unsympathetic. That was always part of my confusion.

          1. Understandable. I think the previews try to make him look badass, but if you haven't seen the first one, I could see how it just makes him look kind of antagonistic.

            Remember, trailers always lie.

              1. Ha, yes. It always makes me laugh how many trailers put scenes in that occur in the last five minutes of the movie.

                Specifically Paranormal Activity, which included...

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                1. Also Quarantine.

                  Studies show people are more like to go to AND enjoy a movie if they already know the ending ahead if time.

  11. I saw movies, too!

    From Time to Time: British time travel adventure taking place in the present and in the early 19th century, with one character going back and forth interacting with his ancestors. The time travel parts were really underwhelming, and it's really slow, but charming.

    13 Sins: A guy who is about to lose everything is unwittingly entered into a game show were he gets money every time he agrees to do a task. The first one is killing a fly for $1,000, then swallowing the fly for $3,000. If he can complete all 13 challenges, he wins 6 million. Of course, each challenge asks him to do more and more horrible things. It plays out much like The Game, only the ending doesn't negate the entire film. It's biggest fault is that it can't decide whether or not it's a thriller or a dark comedy. But it's a lot of fun.

    1. Korean, but yes. Quite a ride.

      I may have to re watch it with adjusted expectations. The first time, I went in quite literally expecting to watch a top 100 movie, and I'm not sure that that is what I got.

      1. No, it's a bit too over-the-top (many Asian films are) to take seriously in some places. The ending takes you to strange places when you think about it. I'd be curious if the Josh Brolin film ends the same way.

        1. I watched the Josh Brolin film- strange places is putting it delicately, and you didn't really have to think about it too hard.

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