At The Movies

Third Tuesday Movie Day

59 Comments

I saw a few things. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the first Wes Anderson movie that I've truly loved all the way around.

I also have Whiplash at home, and am anxious to get to it.

59 thoughts on “Third Tuesday Movie Day”

  1. I watched A Most Violent Year over the weekend and liked it quite a bit. I'm always a sucker for gritty New York crime movies that don't involve the mob (like Dog Day Afternoon) and this one delivered. Plus, an interesting movie about antitrust law? Sign me up!

    Also watched the original Psycho and it was still quite good. I think it's harder now to realize just how unique the ideas were at the time.

    30 Rock has improved immensely by season two because they dialed Tracy Jordan way back.

    Twin Peaks is still awesome.

  2. saw Ant Man (very entertaining, physics be damned) and Not So Fantastic Four (it was popcornable, but fell so far short of what it could have achieved; Von Doom was a terrible villain -- and motivated because he got shut down by the girl? seriously? that's what you went with?)

    2. Saw those same two as well, double feature at the drive in.

      Loved Ant Man. I now have high expectations of all Marvel movies, but they keep living up to them. Just a good, fun, movie. Nice mix of action, comedy, and Paul Rudd being charming.

      Fantastic Four, not so much. I was in for the first hour or so, but then it just falls apart. The special effects were even crappy in parts, and you just can't mess that up for a superhero movie.

      Seeing them both back-to-back really hit home how well Marvel does their movies, and how poorly the other studios do with the Marvel characters they own the rights for. These two coming out a week apart seemed like a big middle finger to any other studio making movies with Marvel characters. "Oh, you have the rights to one of our big superhero teams? And you're going to make a new reboot? We're going to beat you with Ant Man."

  3. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - I had time for something standalone one evening while watching the little one. This was what I picked. The plot, performances, etc, were pretty indicative of the time period, but good lord, the sets and the camera work are crazy. Everything is looking to skew your perception constantly. Doors that are giant trapezoids, vanishing points that skew the perception of distance. Lots of cool stuff. The movie itself was okay (I like the twist, but the last line "now I know exactly what I need to do to cure him!" is pretty bad), but the stuff IN the movie is awesome.

    Linds and I have been watching The Jim Gaffigan Show, because we're both fans of his. It's a sitcom, and it has Jim Gaffigan. It's okay. Decent fluff for when we're sitting with a baby that insists that he wants to be about five feet off the ground and moving at walking speed.

    We've also started Wayward Pines. We're only two episodes in. It's alright so far, but it seems to be missing much in the way of drive for all of the intrigue it's setting up. I'm not sold on the way that Matt Dillon is playing the lead so far. It's been hard finding time to watch the show, so the two episodes we have seen have been spaced out with a week or two in between. Maybe that's part of the problem, but wouldn't it also be a problem with normal, weekly viewing?

    1. I loved the hell out of my rewatch of Caligari for school last semester. I think that the beauty being much more apparent in the remaster helped a ton. Most of my other classmates didn't get the twist. That was... surprising. It's pretty obvious.

    2. Keep up with Wayward Pines. It doesn't get good until a few more episodes. But I agree with Matt Dillon's portrayal in the early episodes.

  4. Trainwreck -- Love Amy Schumer, and there's certainly a lot of laughs, but as a movie it's even more disjointed (with pointless scenes) than most Apatow movies.

    Epic Movie -- Yeah, this was on the TV while I was sick, and it was like watching a trainwreck. Not the worst movie ever, but one of the runner-ups for sure. Kevin McDonald made me laugh.

    Almost done with Parks & Rec.

    1. I got railroaded into going to Date Movie a few years back. I chuckled once through the entire movie. Bottom five, for sure. I obviously won't be seeking out any more adjective movies.

      Linds and I were looking to see Trainwreck, but the kid has made that impossible. Looking forward to it on video, standard Apatow issues notwithstanding.

  5. Caught numerous films off U-Verse:
    Birdman - the magic realism used by the director kept things slightly unhinged, and the long cuts made for an entertaining movie

    Transcendence - when a film has to make up an AI term to hang its hat on, it's trying too hard. Nothing more than a story inspired by The Adolescence of P-1 which I read in college back in the early 80s.

    Two Night Stand - watched the last half passively while wife was watching it. From the genus Chicus flikii, it's redeeming feature was a main character who was from Minnesota (wore a Twins shirt and at one time quoted, "...and the Twins win the World Series!")

    and in the theaters:
    Shaun the Sheep Movie - take the kids. Or not. Great light fare from the folks at Aardman (Wallace & Gromit)

    1. Oh yes. I saw Birdman, too. It was fine, but not half as good as Boyhood. The backslapping about the industry in the last few years for Best Picture winners has gotten ridiculous.

  6. J & I finally caught up on Steven Universe this weekend. We'd seen the first half of the episodes earlier in the summer, and blasted through the last half in two days this weekend. The show has definitely gotten a ton better. I don't think I like it as much as Adventure Time but it's very good, and the diverse cast is fun and appealing.

  7. So, I started watching Attack On Titan. I am NOT an anime fan by any stretch. The only reason I even tried it is because I've heard a little bit of buzz about it, and I was curious. I saw that the episodes were only 25 minutes long, so I figured I could at least see the first one. I'm 5 eps in (out of 25). I'm liking it. It's very weird though. Anime is a whole different genre, and there are a lot of quirks about it that make watching it someone difficult. Not the least of which is the fact that it's in Japanese with English subtitles.

    Finished Wayward Pines. Decent enough that I'm glad I watched it.

    Rewatching Arrested Development. That show is so great.

      1. Say wha!? I'll have to check that out. This is why we have these threads, so that people like me can get in the know.

        1. In regards to AMR's comment below, I've only watched it on my roku and my phone, but both had the option. It's in the language section when you go to start an episode. I have the English track a go for an episode and the voice acting was reasonably good. I prefer the Japanese with subtitles though, but most of my movie watching these days, when I get time to myself to watch, is Chinese martial arts/action movies. Plus I find that the Japanese language, even though I can't understand any of it, lends itself really well to intensity.

            2. I have been a staunch anti-dub snob since I started watching anime almost 20 years ago. It's so weird to me that they're so bad most of the time! And if they're not just out and out bad, they are using famous actors to do voices which is distracting as all hell to me. At least we aren't hacking up shows to make them something completely different for the West! Most of the time.

              1. I though Disney did a pretty fair job with the Miyazaki films, but it's pretty obvious that those got special treatment. I guess my only annoyance is that you have to be all-in to watch subtitles; there is no casual watching.

                1. Miyazaki had Nausicaä ripped unintelligible when it was first brought to the U.S. So one of his requirements for distro was that there be no cuts.
                  So give Disney props for agreeing to that. It does seem that Disney's Lasseter was determined to do it right, too.

            3. Shaolin Soccer has probably the greatest dub track in the history of movies. There are additional jokes in it that aren't in the Chinese version.

                1. That I don't remember. The jokes I'm thinking of weren't different scenes, just different words.

      2. It depends on your player. I can't get it on my (old, hand-me-down) Blu-Ray, but I can on Roku.
        Switching from Japanese to English can be jarring, I tried it on Fullmetal Alchemist and went back and re-watched the episode with their real voices.

        Attack on Titan is less weirdly anime than just about any other anime I've run across. None of the manga-like reaction shots.

        1. No CPO necessary for this. The two concepts are not similar.

          Fun Fact: I at first thought I read "C3PO." I didn't really have an argument against that.

      2. In punman's defense, it's a medium with some conventions that feel like those more often found in genres.
        Plus, it's not clear he wasn't speaking metaphorically.

        1. This is more what I was thinking...would not Anime be a genre within the medium of animation?

  8. Saw The End of The Tour about David Lipski's 4-day interview with David Foster Wallace. Obviously not a lot of action and could put an N/A on special effects. But it was an entertaining, well made movie. Drove some good discussion afterward. So has anyone read Infinite Jest? About to wrap up 100 Years of Solitude and might be looking for a big sprawling book to tackle.

    1. I got about 10%* of the way through on my Kindle a few years ago. I keep saying I need to start over and try again. I loved the story and the structure, but it takes a lot of effort.

      *With so much of the book being footnotes, and thus past my cursor, I'm sure that read-out is low

      1. Also, have you read "Federer as a Religious Experience"? It's always the first DFW work I point someone too if they express interest, not that I'm an expert in him or anything. It's (relatively) bite-sized, but definitely is his style through-and-through.

        I re-read it every year when Wimbledon rolls around.

    2. I've made a couple runs at it, but I'm ready to try again. I was recently thinking about proposing it as group book, actually. Figured that might help motivate me.

      1. Oh, that might help me too. I missed out on the Gravity's Rainbow group (which, I'm still not done with either :/ )

        1. If you keep at it, we'll still be around to discuss. That's one of the things I've found about Pynchon - the further you get from the book, the clearer it becomes.

      2. Heh, part of my motivation:

        'Spoiler' SelectShow

    3. I might be in on that when I finish up Solitude, which I recently picked back up (and then promptly misplaced again).

  9. I've pulled back on watching Anime. EAR was complaining about how every NetFlix category was showing so much anime. Even the documentaries.
    I went to Alaska for a week and haven't only watched a few episodes of Moributo since. (Overall: meh. Slow. I want to see where it's going though.)
    I can watch other stuff and still fold laundry or look at field guides or doze off and follow the story. That doesn't work for subtitled works.
    (There's a French+subtitles movie about Jacques Chirac's personal chef that I started but didn't return to for the same reason.)

    I may have mentioned it before, but I also learned that NetFlix does not have the entire series of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Only 52 (?) of 64.

    And our Blu-Ray has been having periods where there's a network error on Netflix, but it works fine on other streaming options (I opened up Hulu plus, and some other free things. I think Amazon streaming has some clips or something. I found that they have the end of FMA:B!)

  10. Oh, just remembered another interesting one. My wife and I watched "Seven Days in Hell" a couple nights ago. She liked it, I loved it. It's a fake documentary on HBO that covers a 7-day tennis match starring Andy Samburg and Kit Harrington. Completely ridiculous, but also crazy funny. Tons of sports and acting stars with cameos, great voice-over, and plenty of absurdity. Right down my comedy alley, and I'd definitely recommend it.

  11. Wet Hot American Summer - This was so stupid. And fun.
    Wet Hot American Summer: First Day At Camp - I cannot believe how well they nailed the tone of the movie. Stupidly funny.

    Bob's Burgers - Through Season 1, and part way into Season 2. I enjoy it, but the humor seems to be better in small doses for me, since there isn't quite the balancing emotional connection that I've craved in my comedies ever since Futurama and Parks & Rec.

    Mission Impossible - This movie did not hold up as well as I thought it would.

    Maverick - This movie held up much better than I thought it would. Just fun. Not a good movie by any means, but a very very fun one, where you get to be in on so much of the humor, especially if you've seen it before.

    1. I would say there's plenty of emotion in Bob's Burgers. It's, for me, a fairly accurate portrayal of family life. Dad feels a little put-upon, but still cares deeply for his family. A Mom who loves her children, almost overly so. The oldest child is trying to navigate puberty and her place in the world. A middle child who's extremely extroverted, craving attention. The youngest who strives to be independent, but still won't admit she needs her Dad. It's not as apparent as Leslie Knope's or Fry's earnestness, but each character loves the others in the family, and even if they never really say it out loud, it's there subtlety.

      1. Agreed. (I had to reply to this, right?)

        It doesn't reach the emotional highs and lows like Futurama, for sure, but there's a huge amount of love and tenderness in Bob's Burgers, just not as overt. Each character seems very different and a bit out there, but in the end they are always on the same team.

      2. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the show, and will continue watching. But I think you hit the nail on the head re: earnestness. I love Fry and Knope in a way I don't love anyone in Bob's Burgers, because of their earnestness.

        1. This is honestly probably because the show hasn't yet hit its stride where you're at. The first half of the first season is kind of mediocre, and goes for gross out, lowest common denominator jokes a ton. Once you hit "Art Crawl" the show steadily improves. Once you hit season 3 it's all gold, and honestly I think the familial relationships are way more overt and fleshed out. The Belchers are easily my favorite TV family, and it's my favorite animated show by a wide margin. I love it so much it hurts sometimes.

          I know you're going to keep watching, but I'm just saying things get even better!

          1. That's good to know. Because it's doing gross-out humor and absurdity better than so many things, but there really doesn't seem to be much building going on yet. Louise and Tina are just a bit too far out in either direction to really connect with emotionally, and Gene hasn't had any real problems yet.

          2. Came to Movie Day to mention watching Bob's Burgers and ask the question specifically which you have answered here...midish way through season one and waiting for it to pick up. (Thought the first episode was funniest so far, though "Art Crawl" had me laughing out loud.)

            1. Every episode so far there has been a line or two that has gotten me to laugh out loud. Usually something Gene says.

              1. Gene's throwaway lines always get me ("How does this not topple your economy!?"). Loving Mirman for
                years helps.

                The first episode that grabbed me was Tina's Birthday. That's when I started to detect a voice.

    2. I was watching some Bob's Burgers last night, I was reminded of how much I love the richness of their guest/"reoccurring" cast. Obviously the main cast is great, but there are so many awesome comedic actors that fill out the rest of the world. Some obvious examples being Kevin Kline, David Herman,the Silvermans, Aziz Ansari, Gary Cole, Jenny Slate, TIm Meadows, Bill Hader, and on and on and on.

  13. I realize this is late, but I just got caught up this week: Mr. Robot, despite it's pretty bad name, is probably the best show on television right now. This season has been masterful, and I cannot wait for the finale on Wednesday. I recommend it very, very highly.

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