What Did You Watch Today?

[Colly]

I forced myself through the first one to see if they get out. Now I just want them all to die.

[Benji]

Life of Pi is fantastic. Strong acting for strong characters, fantastic story that explores the nature of an individual human in an often surreal and sometimes bitter way. Sweet, funny, emotional, and never dull moment. Beautifully shot too. Well worth a watch.

[Benji]

Going to get crucified for this, but Raging Bull is slow and plodding to start with. When it picks up about midway through it becomes a better film, but it's still not as terrific as I'd been lead to believe. It has its moments, but for the most part I spent the entire film waiting for something to light up the screen that never came. Not downright bad, but just not interesting, and I don't even think that's down to overhype. Probably the kind of movie that film students would love, but just not for me.

[stokeriño]

Withnail & I was one of those films where there's a tonne of good stuff in it, but it's been eulogised to me by so many people that it inevitably fell a bit flat in the end.

Basically Richard E. Grant's character was good fun, Paul McGann's was okay, and everything else in the film just swirled around in a whole lot of mild indifference.

[Benji]

Grosse Pointe Blank was pretty average. It had a really interesting premise that it never lived up to. The lack of use of Dan Akroyd was also disappointing.

[stokeriño]

You have no idea how glad I am that, unlike in HP and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban's version of "oh there's a thing and it's coming to get you (P.S. turns out it's Voldemort again)" did not, in fact, turn out to be Voldemort again.

[9 to 5]

Withnail & I was one of those films where there's a tonne of good stuff in it, but it's been eulogised to me by so many people that it inevitably fell a bit flat in the end.

Basically Richard E. Grant's character was good fun, Paul McGann's was okay, and everything else in the film just swirled around in a whole lot of mild indifference.

Turns out Stok is not cool.

[stokeriño]

As I always suspected!

[Jimmy]

No love for Richard Griffiths?

[Benji]

The Expendables was what it was. Let down with the lack of one liners, but the rest was fun.

[Benji]

Grudge Match is pretty good. Funny stuff, particularly the moments where they take the piss out of their own films. Shane from Walking Dead put in a solid performance, though the rest of the side stories fell a tad flat.

[Benji]

First Christmas film! Scrooged was a pretty interesting twist on the classic tale. Everyone plays their parts well and whilst not even close to the best adaptation ever, it's a decent film and a serviceable ode.

[brenchill]

Benji has seen all the films.

[Benji]

I'm trying! I'm basically trying to get ahead for my 365 thing so I can feel more comfortable skipping days. That plus having new Pokémon to play means I can easily watch something in the background.

[Benji]

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom was a let down. In the early going it felt more like they just took random events and put them on screen with little regard to detail or context, and if I wanted random events then I'd just have watched any number of Mandela documentaries available. Once he gets to prison (spoiler! ) it becomes a better film. I suspect they didn't want to make him unsympathetic early on considering some of the things he did, which is a hinderance to the story because it feels like they're hiding something I'd imagine most people know about.

Idris Elba is stupendous as Mandela, it's just a shame the film couldn't match his performance.

[Benjamin]

Started this year's Christmas watch. Went with Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol because I've been wanting to watch it for a while. The visuals are really, really good, but it felt a little hollow to me, actually, perhaps because they went the caricature route at times, which was a little bit of a letdown. Carrey is absolutely phenomenal, though, you can almost forget it's visual effects and motion capture and really think you're watching him.

Might have to add Polar Express to what I want to watch this year, though, see how it compares. I really can't wait to get to the final 7 again, though!

[Monkey D. Lars]

Watched: The Last Crusade again yesterday. Good Stuff

[King Ellis]

Will be a little redundant to do a weekly rundown like I usually do by weeks end so I'll mention the two I watched over the weekend.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Feels maybe a little tired to be going into Wolverine's backstory again but the Team X stuff is pretty cool, the stuff between him and Sabretooth was new to me and, like in Days of Future Past, I kinda like seeing mutants show up in wars. Great to see Gambit, all the card stuff and the staff slams looked cool, as did Deadpool, seeing him do Optic Blasts was pretty crazy though. Looked creepy as hell by the end too with his mouth sewn shut or whatever the fuck.

In a World... (2013)

I like how this goes against your expectations, the one that stood out to me was how there's this older guy moving in his new girlfriend much to the chagrin of his daughters who are pretty much the same age as her, and you're expecting her to just be in it for the money or him just looking for sex but they're really genuine and, even though the daughters are badmouthing her every chance they get, she's really trying to help them and really brings round the dad and his shoddy parenting by the end. Not that it doesn't have some quirkiness in amongst all this family drama, like Gustav kissing Carol on the nose. Bizarre.

[GhostMachine]

THE GIVER - Not bad, but I ended up smacking myself because I was trying to figure out where I saw the lead actor before. He was also the lead in THE SIGNAL. Its based on the first novel in a series of books for kids, which came out in 1993. From what I've read, they did make a few changes from the novel. Mainly the main character's age (he's 11 in the book) and the ending. (The novel has an ambiguous ending; that shit don't fly in movies) I give it **** stars. But it would probably be *** if it didn't have Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep in it.

We're getting MALEIFICENT (probably sic, but I don't care) from Netflix tomorrow. Not my choice.

Edited December 2, 2014 by GhostMachine

[Benji]

This Is 40 had its funny moments. Nothing that'll blow anyone away but it's serviceable. Though they did completely misunderstand the ending of LOST which is totally unforgiveable.