MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES! ACK!

[elpollodiablo]

Mine too, I think! Granted, that's a pretty low bar, but it blew the Hunger Games out of the fucking water, for sure.

Iron Man was the only Marvel movie I thought was worth a second look; Captain America had some interesting elements initially but as soon as it got into the big set pieces and CGI sky battles I got bored. Toby Jones was great, though.

[elpollodiablo]

Thor was total shite, though

[YojimboMonkey]

I DISAGREE

Thor was only MOSTLY shite. On the order of 95% or so. I'm pretty sure there were a couple of things I thought were good about it.

[Greg Nog]

I loved Iron Man, liked Cap a great deal, HATED Thor, and I thought The Avengers was pretty good, round about the same as Captain America.

Banner, Iron Man and Cap were great, Fury didn't have enough to do, The Hulk was poorly-used during his first appearance but splendid in his second one, and Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Thor were essentially little more than props.

[Ignatius]

Thor had INCREDIBLE helmets and handsome man! But not much else, true.

[dieblucasdie]

The Avengers is a movie about people falling

[Ignatius]

Oh shit

So.. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is curating a real short series. Generally speaking, even though this is an 'arts' theatre, or whatever, the programmers just look at the distributor's list of films based on the planned series and pick out some shit... There's no art to it, and any thematic unity is determined after the fact.

I don't think it's unreasonable, since their clientele is a bunch of old fucks who like to pretend they're a cut above tastewise, when all that means is they're the only theatre in the county with a copy of Midnight in Paris or whatever...

Annnyhow... Joe was granted the opportunity to pick out four or five things he liked, and even brought in a few filmmakers to do Q&As...

I'm sorry to do this again, but what should I watch, LPTJ?!?!

Choices -

A Brighter Summer Day

Winter Vacation

Love Streams



Btw, whit - Joe decided that our theater would be the official archive of his stuff, so we've got a copy of Iron Pussy.

[G.C.R]

LOVE STREAMS

[Greg Nog]

Holy shit, Rango was maybe the weirdest (ostensible) kids' movie I've ever seen.  Surprisingly good, and fairly trippy when it wasn't being a straightforward Western; I kind of wonder how this ended up getting made.

[DCDave]

I saw Avengers and it was wonderful.

[Ignatius]

Huh! I just realized that in watching Rango, I completely stopped thinking of it as a kids' movie about ten minutes in.

[jebreject]

I saw Avengers and it was wonderful.

Yes! I loved it! Maybe not a perfect movie, but one of the most thoroughly entertaining superhero movies I've ever seen! Smart, funny, great action that verged on being too bombastic but was still really exciting and awesome.

[Greg Nog]

Huh! I just realized that in watching Rango, I completely stopped thinking of it as a kids' movie about ten minutes in.

Yeah, the movie seems to encourage that, between the gunfighting, the drinking, the hallucinations, the characters threatening to send each other to hell, and the cameo by Hunter S Thompson, not to mention the INCREDIBLE animation of facial expressions. 

I was kind of expecting Madagascar or something, but this was a very different film than the trailers led me to believe it would be.

[elpollodiablo]

I saw Avengers and it was wonderful.

Yes! I loved it! Maybe not a perfect movie, but one of the most thoroughly entertaining superhero movies I've ever seen! Smart, funny, great action that verged on being too bombastic but was still really exciting and awesome.

I heard there's a montage of candlelight vigils in Union Square after the NYC destruction scenes? Gross

[DCDave]

The montage includes a scene of a candlelight vigil.

[Nick Ink]

I loved Madagascar! And I fell asleep at the cinema while my daughter and her friends watched Rango.

[dieblucasdie]

The montage includes a scene of a candlelight vigil.

Yeah, it's a montage of news footage of the aftermath, with some people thanking the Avengers, some people blaming them, some people celebrating, some people mourning, politicians calling for investigations, etc. It's really not in poor taste at all, unless you think NYC destruction scenes are in poor taste no matter what.

edit: To be clear, it's totally your prerogative to find that kind of stuff gross; it's just that the candlelight vigil bit is not the bit that's going to gross you out. More likely, the Captain-America-as-first-responder wish fulfillment stuff will do that. Mostly I was just impressed that Whedon managed to squeeze a paycheck for Enver Gjokaj out of it, though

[Greg Nog]

It actually didn't even occur to me to find it gross in a reference-to-911 kind of way, which is more than I can say about the weird sexual undertones of threats to torture Black Widow.

[dumbfish]

Saw Damsels in Distress on a whim Sunday. Haven't had two thoughts about it since, that's how lightweight it is. Hyperverbal without being particularly clever. One fun part was seeing the close match between the actors in this one and the folks the director used back in the day.

[YojimboMonkey]

+ Richard Ayaode in a movie coming out this summer, woo!

- also starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill

[Captain]

I know I'm totally late to the party on this, but I just saw Cabin in the Woods today. So much fun! Sure, the storytelling itself is rife with problems, but the gags make it worthwhile to see past said problems.

Give me, like, 5 weeks and I'll probably get around to seeing the Avengers and say the same thing.

[nicoinfurs]

Saw two films recently:
It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010) - Thought it was fairly good, though aimed at a younger audience than I expected. The part where the kid at the end says "I too get that depression thing" was kind of funny. Just shows how silly it can sound and yet it's not as silly as it may be.

Animal Kingdom (2010) - This was straightup one of the best things I've seen in a long time. Edge of my seat from the first scene. Brilliant.

[davy]

I thought Thor and Captain America were both about the same level of good, though for some reason I have a soft spot for Thor. Green Lantern was the terrible one, but I guess that's not relevant at the moment.

[monkeypants]

Bully

Jesus, that was brutal.

[nicoinfurs]

Bully

Jesus, that was brutal.

I actually havent seen that one, but this Estonian bully film called Klass is also pretty brutal. It's actually one of my all time favorite films. If you feel like watching more: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988108/