VHS 2
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Liked it better than the first but it wasn't without faults.

Tape 49: Overlapping story. Kinda boring and didnt make much sense but neither did the overlapping story from the first.

Phase I Clinical Trials: A good story to start with and it utilized the found footage in a good way. Somewhat creepy but it had a predictable ending.

A Ride in the Park: This was ok. Seeing the story through the zombies eyes was cool but they never explained why he had a camera on his helmet. Not a big deal i guess but to me the first rule of found footage should be to give a good reason as to why theres a camera.

Safe Haven: Definitely the best. It was the only one with a fleshed out story and with characters you actually gave a damn about. It was also the scariest. Something about the idea of being trapped inside some cult or institution that is trying to kill, torture or sacrifice you really freaks me out. This story had the best villain too, who was completely over the top and awesome. My only complaint was the incredibly silly ending.

Slumber Party Alien Abduction: This one was just silly and all over the place and really hard to watch.



Saving Mr. Banks
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This one started out rough as Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers was infuriatingly annoying but as the movie went on, it became sweet, touching and as magical as any Disney movie. I thought Tom Hanks was great as Walt Disney

Got a few more Mark Duplass flicks to watch. He's slowly becoming one of my favorite actors. You should check out The Spectacular Now if you haven't already. I thought it was a really solid coming of age film.

He was just recording his mountain bike ride for fun. GoPro makes helmet and chest cams for recording all kinds of stuff -- biking, snowboarding, skydiving. A buddy of mine had one and we used to record some of our more interesting mountain bike rides.

Oh OK. That makes sense then. Seemed weird to me when I watched it but I guess it does fit with the character. They let you know that the riding was really important to him.

"Apartment 1303 3D" 1/10

What the hell was Rebecca De Mornay and John Diehl doing in this maggot infested ghost turd? They ought to fire their agents immediately.
Especially Mornays role was completely unnecessary and so retarded she must have been as drunk as her character while doing her scenes. Otherwise i'm sure she would've jumped off a cliff in pure embarrassment.

And the entire family constant talking to themself for the first 30 minutes was driving me absolutely insane. Not even old people with cats talk this much when they are alone.

And a 5 million dollar budget? What the fuck did they go to?? Hopefully to Rebecca De Mornay.

The movie had a few decent scares with the ghost lurking through the windows. Therefore 1/10 and not 0/10.

It's actually very common for these people to film their bike rides - youtube is full of them - but I agree with you for most of the rest of the film, especially Safe Haven. If this was 'found footage' who edited all the camera feeds together. Didn't make sense. And if I remember correctly, Safe Haven had some POV shots that weren't thru a camera (I could be wrong on this though). Any way when your whole framing device is based around this, it really takes you out of it when you break your own rules.

Escape Plan

Entertaining as hell without a dull moment. Best role Schwarzenegger has had in years. The chemistry between him and Stallone was perfect. This one really exceeded my expectations and had a great script. Loved how the guards looked like they were right out of THX-1138. I dig a good prison break flick and this is definitely one of them. Recommended.

good to know - it looked awful in the ads..

My kid insisted we see this last night - making it about the 5th time i've watched it.
Thankfully it does have great replay value :)

Stoked to hear this was good, I really wanted it to be.

Still haven't checked that one out.

I used to thrash movies when I was a kid. Nowadays I'll rarely watch something more than once. Drove my dad crazy watching Jaws almost everyday ::big grin::

he rarely does it but Mr. Robert Downey Jr. is his favourite actor :)

Born in Brentwood, Essex, England

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0610459/b..._=nm_ov_bio_sm

The Puffy Chair

I wasn't a fan of the camera work in parts but otherwise I really enjoyed this film. It mixed realism, comedy and drama together very well. On paper the storyline is pretty much run of the mill road trip comedy but stylistically the film excels and delivers something fresher with more heart than it's bigger budget counterparts.

Looking forward to that one; it's on the Netflix queue. ::cool::

Have you seen Humpday yet? It has Josh from Blair Witch and it's one of my favorite of the Duplass flicks. Really well-done.

Bad Milo

It was a bit of a throwback to the 80's, but a bit clean to really work, or maybe their is an edit out there that shows a bit more and makes it worthwhile.

I saw Insidious 2 over the weekend. I enjoyed the first movie and was quite impressed with how the filmmakers tied the sequel in so closely with the original. Otherwise, I didn’t think that the sequel was anything special, although I do have a soft spot for Patrick Wilson, so that may color my judgment a little. ;)

As for today, I just finished watching Long Pigs (2007) a Canadian “found footage” film about a cannibalistic serial killer. Unlike Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, there is absolutely no camp in this movie. And the actor playing the killer is just terrific. Amazing performance. This was a good one, for me anyway.

No I've got a copy so will probably check it out on my days off. So I guess I'm officially on board with the "mumblecore" thing now ::big grin::

Will check out some of the others you mentioned too.

Each of the documentary crew members was wearing a shirt button spy cam, so we got POV from each of them.

I agree though, I often wonder in found footage films -- Who gathered all this footage and edited it? And if someone went to that trouble, why did they leave in all the white noise and exaggeratedly choppy cuts?

I typically just consider it a necessary leap of faith in order to enjoy the film -- either it's explained who and why, like in Blair Witch, or it's not explained, and in that case sometimes I just think of it in terms of a bunch of loose footage that *exists*, but wasn't necessarily ever gathered and edited together. I know that doesn't exactly fit the overarching story in the V/H/S films (discovering a bunch of evil video tapes and watching them), but then again, who uses VHS anymore anyway? Like in the first film, one segment was entirely Skype video calls. Did someone actually transfer that to a VHS tape? Doubtful. So basically, I'm forgiving of that type of stuff in the found footage subgenre because it often just seems necessary.

"Cold Comes the Night" 6/10

Good performances but not a very interesting story. Bryan Cranston played a russian version of Mr White.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)--very disturbing. I think I need a little break from serial killer movies for a while.

And I finally saw The Hobbit on Tuesday. Extremely disappointed, especially with the characterization of the Mirkwood Elves. What is P.J. doing?

Texas Chainsaw 2013

The Last Stand


Aaarnuld can still throw down

fun mindless action

"The Wolf of Wall Street" 7/10

Pretty entertaining but way too long for this kind of story. At least in Casino somebody got whacked once in a while.

oh lord - i HATED that movie!! i was embarrassed for everyone in it…


however - you got me wanting to see My Favourite Year so i pulled out the laserdisc last night and showed it to the kid. What a sweet, beautiful, funny movie.

"this is for ladies!"
"so is this ma'am, but every now and then i must run a little water through it"

I can surely understand your hatred for that movie......I just have a soft spot for those 80s action movies.

The Stunt Man is another great O'toole movie , which I'm sure you have seen.

I do too - for the actual 80's movies - and I wanted to enjoy this one in that same light .. but this just felt like a soulless by-the -numbers misfire



oh yes - I have the Stunt man :)

Frozen

Though I enjoyed Tangled, I think I liked this better. I enjoyed the Sisterly-relationship and how it played into an overall good message of "women don't need no man...but it's perfectly okay to want/get one". Songs and animation were fantastic too, and the humour was pitched very well (didn't even find the Snowman annoying)

8/10

My latest movie watch is Frozen as well.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ps73fd69b3.jpg

I found it utterly charming. Definitely loved that it's trying to undermine typical Disney tropes with a female-centric storyline that isn't just about finding your Prince... I loved that, at the core, it's just a movie about two sisters.

The music was great, Kristen Bell was fantastic, and I agree that the humor was really well-done. The snowman was hilarious.

Definitely recommended.

I really couldn't get into this one. It seemed so unremarkable, especially after Pixar and even something like Tangled, which I thought was pretty good. The songs, the characters, the comedy was all pretty flat for me.

"King of Devil's Island" 7-8/10

Norwegian youth prison flick. Nice n' brutal.




"Antisocial" 7/10


Love that titel. Someone is obviously fed up with Social Networks.

The actors did an okay job in this doomsday movie, but the characters seemed a little too calm, considering the horrific situation they were in.




"Vendetta" 6/10

British revenge flick. An ok time waster.

Savages

i've stopped buying movies for the most part so i've been catching up on the ones I already have - trying to work my way through a pretty sizeable backlog.

Forgot i had this Oliver Stone film - a couple of years old now.

I guess it was well made - i just couldn't connect to a single character in the film so i didn't really engage.

movies about potheads leaves me pretty cold.

Del Toro was fascinating to watch though - one of the most vile, reptilian characters i've seen in a very long time.

Oddly, the only thing I remember about this film is Blake Lively's super-hot sex scene at the beginning.

Why am i not surprised? ::roll eyes::

Agreed. I loved this film. I have a B.A. in History and I'm hoping to specialize in the history of institutions when I eventually move on to graduate school. In my undergrad years, my first dissertation was on TB hospitals, although I think it would be really cool to branch out and study youth reformatories like the one featured in "King of Devil's Island".

Evil Dead 2013
I was disappointed with this one.
Don't feel the need to see it again.

Have you seen Scum? Sounds kinda similar.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079871/

Might wanna check out Wilderness too.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465670/

Jackass: The Movie (2002)

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I remember laughing myself silly the first time I saw this movie. I just recently listened to Johnny Knoxville's interview with Marc Maron on WTF in anticipation for Bad Grandpa, so I had to revisit this...

Still funny, but doesn't pack as much punch when you've already seen the gags. That first watch, though, was great. Looking forward to Bad Grandpa.


...


Short Term 12 (2013)

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Solid little character piece about a girl (artfully played by Brie Larson - whom I LOVE) who works at a foster care facility and also faces her own demons.

Sounds cheesy maybe but I thought that the writing and acting were really solid and honest; I have a friend who is a social worker and she deals with troubled youths and their families daily; seemed to be a relatively honest look into that slice-of-life. Some critics have said that the story is "a little too neat," but I thought that ending on a hopeful note really worked with the story.

There were two distinct scenes in the movie where two separate kids in the foster home are expressing themselves through art; one through a rap and one through a children's story. It was heart-felt and made me weepy. Definitely memorable.

Liked this a lot.

4.25/5.


...


Devil's Pass (2013)

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Really great little found footage flick. Took a while to get where it's going (I suppose we'd call it a "slow burn," but to be honest, some of the writing was really poor that it just felt formulaic), but when we got there I found it surprisingly unique and creepy. The last 1/4 will stick in my mind for a bit. I liked where the mystery led us and the end as well. Pleasantly surprised.

3/5.

The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty

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Thought this was great. Ben Stiller's best work to date as both a actor and a director. As far as big budget "life affirming" Hollywood films go I thought this was original, entertaining and didn't fall into the usual trap of forced cliched sentimentality. Quite a rich film visually with a deep subtext... it's left me thinking about it today. Worth watching if only to see Ben Stiller pop a kickflip ::big grin:: For me it was a much needed pick me up to get me through the rest of a shitty week. You'll know whether it's your thing or not without watching it but don't write it off and give it a shot you might just surprise yourself.

"Movie 43" 7/10

The funniest thing about this movie was the huge amount of famous actors involved in these goofy sketches. Especially the first sketch starring Hugh Jackman was hilarious.



"Gravity" 9/10

Best picture, best director, best visual effects, best cinematography. And then some.

I saw this movie, I thought it was funny, and I was surprised to learn about all the hatred for it when I looked it up on metacritic. It really isn't much more than a bunch of celebrities want to make their own funny or die sketches, and some of them were funny, others not as much. It seems like these critics tried to judge it next to Lawrence in Arabia on account of its cast. If you don't take it seriously, it will give you some good laughs, its basically an above average episode of Saturday Night Live. I also saw The Onion movie recently too, its not bad if you don't take it seriously. The Onion News Network TV show is much better though. Their 'Porkin' Across America' series is an absolute classic.