What Did You Watch Today?

[VerbalPuke]

Juice, it's been awhile since I watched this one but it's still pretty awesome.

Great soundtrack as well, this is great hip hop.

[Tyrone]

Went on a bit of a binge recently and watched some films I'd been meaning to see...

This is the End

Really enjoyed this, and I didn't find there to be any boring parts. Good fun from the Apatow crew.

Carrie

Didn't see the need for the remake, though apparently this one is closer to King's novel? Nonetheless, quite enjoyed this one. Julianne Moore has impressed me in every movie I've watched her in. I have the original Carrie on DVD, but I've not watched it lately so I don't remember if the mother/daughter dynamic was as brutal/disturbing here as it was in the original. Big fan of Chloë Grace Moretz and I liked what she brought to the table. Her and Moore had really good chemistry and hopefully they can do more stuff in the future. While I enjoyed it, I did have to wonder why it was made exactly. In the case of Friday the 13th I understood as they made changes, took things from certain movies and -- IMO -- made a really good movie, one better than the original franchise barring VI. Here, though, there's not much that could've been tweaked as the story of Carrie is so iconic, but also quite simple and it doesn't seem like you can go too outside of the box with it.

Don Jon

Really enjoyable movie. I didn't really know of JGL until Inception and liked him there, but his work in 50/50 really impressed me, so I was quite happy to see his directorial debut. Nice story that brought something new to the table and I never got the "ugh, a rom-com" feeling from watching this. It was pretty fun while also having its serious parts and I was happy it didn't go the usual route. Heck of a debut for Gordon-Levitt and I'm excited to see what he'll do in the future.

Fruitvale Station

I'd never really searched about Oscar Grant III or what happened, so I basically came into this with a clean slate. Liked the casting of Oscar, his girlfriend and the mother and all three did really well together. Not much to say although I thought they did a good job telling the story and getting me invested despite the fact that I at least knew the conclusion beforehand.

About to watch The Wolf of Wall Street, pretty excited given it stars Leo and I've heard so many different reviews of it.

[zero]

The Carrie remake was definitely a victim of the studio wanting a remake of the Sissy Spacek film, the talk about it being closer to the novel was largely marketing spin. I thought everyone did a hell of a job in the film and I liked everything about the movie, but it still has no reason to exist and they could've done so much more with it.

[phatman]

#4 Chronicle

Urgh. Thought this movie had so much potential and it's just wasted. The acting is good and I thought Dane DeHann (?) was actually pretty good as the eventual villian however, I just felt like I wanted more out of the experience. I could understand if others liked this, just felt like a let down to me.

#5 Armored

It is what it is. I actually like most of the cast here and they do alright with what they are given. I wasn't expecting much more than your generic heist film and it pretty much delivered on that.

#6 Good Will Hunting

How had I never watched this movie before? I guess I looked at it and thought "Nah, that'll be too boring". It wasn't though. Great story and even better acting. I can see why this launched some careers. If anybody hasn't seen this movie, I recommend it.

Only 359 movies to go

[Jimmy]

Saw 12 Years A Slave in a tiny cinema of 45 people as a birthday present from my girlfriend. Not only was it a fantastic experience, the film is incredible. I've got a few Oscar contenders to see, but I think it's going to take some doing for any film to top the Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor categories. Ejiofor is beyond incredible, Fassbender is fucking superb and Steve McQueen makes a good case to be considered one of the best directors of his generation. I love all three of his films, and I'm just mesmerised by his use of long takes; which is one of my favourite things in cinema. It's completely harrowing, but just so good.

Everyone should go see it, and if you don't look out for that type of thing, watch out for the amount of long takes, they're fantastic.

[Benjamin]

Yeah, the long takes were actually bloody brilliant, and I'm one who usually doesn't like stuff like that, but this film fitted that type of style perfectly.

By the way, 12 Years A Slave was the highest rated film on Letterboxd in 2013.

[EddieG]

Is there some kinda connection between directors who spend a lot of time in Amsterdam and long takes?

[Benjamin]

Fruitvale Station

Going into this Chiwetel Ejiofor was my number one best performance by an actor in 2013, but I think Michael B. Jordan just edged him out here. I actually forgot all about this incident (I'm a horrible person ) so watching it and not knowing what was going to happen probably made it so much better for me. I knew bad shit was about to happen, though, so I was telling myself that I really wished that the movie would just end after Oscar picked his daughter up from preschool. It was a pretty awesome moment.

[SRN]

So I just watched The Lone Ranger, on a whim. It was quite a mess, with a whole bunch of lame plot twists and such; plus, it dragged on for just a bit too long. However, it did have some solid performances from Armie Hammer and William Fichtner. Plus, Hammer and Depp worked well together. All of that wasn't enough to save it, though.

...

Until that fucking train-chase scene. Oh my god, I loved that shit. Holy hell, never has a movie picked up so fast and ended on such a high note, considering the fact that it sort of fell flat the rest of the time.

[zero]

Sexy Evil Genius

Like if a less-talented Tarantino directed a low-budget movie with the Nerd All-Star Team as its cast. I kinda sorta loved it.

[livid]

In A World...

Pretty boring and not very funny. Then it inexplicably tries to shoehorn a strong feminism aspect into the third act that doesn't quite match up with the tone of the rest of the film. Meh.

Lone Survivor

I was incredibly disappointed by this. Maybe I should have expected less but I'm a fan of a lot of the cast and I like director Peter Berg quite a bit. Also, almost copying and pasting the feel of the FNL series was not a smart choice. I can see why they thought so on paper but it felt forced and disjointed.

[Benjamin]

Sweetwater

This is not good. After seeing a bunch of Westerns last year that were amazing, this one really left an awful taste in my mouth. I guess it tried to be Tarantino-ish in a way, but everything just felt flat. Everyone that has watched it has been gushing about Ed Harris' performance though (so if you're a big fan of his then it's probably recommended), but the true star is Jason Isaacs as the antagonist. Awesome performance by him. Other than that, though, it started bad, the middle was sort of okay, the ending was just gave me the 'bleh' feeling.

[Baddar]

Mama

Well, Baddarina shit herself. It was a decent film. I didn't go in expecting the children to be disturbed, so that was kinda creepy.

[Gazz]

Watched about 97 films on the planes to and from Sydney including Pacific Rim (dumb but fun), Paranoia (Liam Hemsworth tries to be Ryan Gosling), Wall Street (snooze) and classics such as Independence Day (Welcome to Erf!).

Stand out performer of them all was Rush. I love F1. I love the 70's and it's fashion and music and I love James Hunt. Great movie, made even better by the fact that the 'storyline' occurred naturally with Lauda coming back from life threatening injury to fight for his title.

Sex (for breakfast)/10

[Monkey D. Lars]

Wolf of Wallstreet.

Luckily for me I had my seated belt on. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS ONE HELL OF A RIDE!!!! Give DiCaprio his oscar!

[LL!]

[TKz]

12 Years a Slave.

I can't remember what happiness is.

[LL!]

Happiness is never ever seeing that film.

[Gazz]

I'm going to wait for the sequel, 13 Years A Slave

[Benjamin]

You should watch the prequel, 30 Years A Freed Black Man.