The Latest Movies (Non-Anime) You Are Watching Right Now

[davemerrill]

The X-Men storyline they're adapting is the "Days Of Future Past" story from the early 1980s in which... geez, it's been a while... the Kitty Pryde from the future comes back in time to present-day to try and change history and prevent her future, a scary dystopian world where mutants are hunted down and killed by the giant Sentinel robots. It was fun to read at the time, a great combination of lowball SF, super-hero stuff, and soap opera, and like every other good story at that time, Chris Claremont just sort of walked away from it, so I don't know how it ended. I do know that the storyline wound up being how they introduced Cable, I think. I'd long since quit reading super hero comics by that time.

They certainly were making some terrible super hero movies there for a while. The properties getting consolidated behind either Warners or Disney has led to some quality control, the bar has been raised a little higher, but there were a few years there when you couldn't turn around without a terrible cheap super-property film hitting you in the face.

[greg]

The X-Men storyline they're adapting is the "Days Of Future Past" story from the early 1980s

Oh, awesome! That was done a bit with the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon from several years ago, although it was Xavier communicating with Wolverine in the present day via timeslips or something. It would be cool to see the regular X-Men characters again in a movie. I just checked the IMDB and it looks like they're bringing back several of the same actors/actresses (minus Kelsey Grammer as Beast, whom I thought did a great job... but isn't that the same girl who played Kitty?), so that's cool.

Plus, Bryan Singer is behind the steering wheel again, which is great. I think he handles the characters better. (For example, not like the 3rd movie that would make Psylocke show up as a minor character and then kill her off without giving her any real meaning to the plot.)

I just want them to pay more attention to getting their mutant powers correct. Like if they're going to have Jubilee, make sure she has fireworks and not lightning bolts (her part was cut from X2), and make sure to have Rogue a badass instead of a do-nothing. Rogue is potentially the most powerful X-Men around, and they really need to have her kicking ass for a change. They've already spent their time establishing the characters, so it's time to have more than just Wolverine kicking ass for a change.

The previous X-Men movie was pretty cool. Seeing Havoc was awesome, and they made Banshee look great. I'd sworn that Banshee would look silly in a movie, but they did the character justice.

Ilj: they kinda did the Dark Phoenix saga with the The Last Stand movie, for what it's worth.

[llj]

They certainly were making some terrible super hero movies there for a while. The properties getting consolidated behind either Warners or Disney has led to some quality control, the bar has been raised a little higher, but there were a few years there when you couldn't turn around without a terrible cheap super-property film hitting you in the face.

I just remember a lot of them being announced but were never released. There were constant stories about trying to greenlight a big budget Spider-Man film since the late 1980s

[llj]

Interesting thing of note about a movie I watched last night, an indie comedy called "For a Good Time, Call..."

There's one scene where a really squeaky voiced woman comes to interview for a phone sex job. I felt like I knew her or perhaps seen her before, but I couldn't quite figure it out until I turned on the commentary track for the scene. It turns out the actress' name is Sugar Lyn Beard, AKA Stephanie Beard. For those of you here who ever caught any showings of the 3rd and 4th season of the dubbed Sailor Moon, she played Chibi-Usa/Rini. While the dub in these Sailor Moon seasons was universally panned, I recall many people liking Beard's "super-cute" sounding take on Chibi-Usa/Rini, especially over the rather screechy sounding dub actress who played Chibi-Usa in the 2nd season. Beard really has an unnaturally young voice in real life.

It's also amusing that in this scene, she uses her Chibi-Usa voice (which is slightly different from her real one, albeit not much) for what is hands down the most envelope-pushing joke in the film. In trying to impress her interviewers, she puts on the voice for a very unsavory purpose.

Apparently Beard has appeared in a number of movies lately from my brief look at her Wiki, including the Seth Rogen/Joseph Gordon-Levitt vehicle 50/50. I don't *really* remember seeing her in that film, but I can harbor a few guesses as to what role she might have played. But I believe that her part in "For a Good Time, Call..." is her biggest role in a film to date. She's certainly memorable in it, chewing up the scenery opposite the two leading ladies (Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller, who are pretty respected in the indie world themselves). Wouldn't be surprised if Beard gets a lot more roles in comedies because of the easy gags you can write using her voice.

[greg]

Ha! That's funny! I barely remember the Sailor Moon dub. I don't think I got past the 2nd season. I think the novelty of the "Hey wow, anime is being shown on TV again!" factor during my college years had worn off by then.

I do remember Sailor Moon's voice had been cuter in the beginning of the 1st season, then changed to the goofier, hammier voice actress who did the character more justice.

[llj]

I still have Sailor Moon S on DVD, which includes both the dub and sub (3rd and 4th seasons didn't cut footage unlike the 1st and 2nd. Script changes abound, however...)

I actually hopped onto the Sailor Moon train rather late. In fact, you could say I was very late to the shoujo anime genre in general. When Sailor Moon first aired in North America, I avoided the show in that first year because I preferred to see some mecha anime on TV (At the time, mecha anime was still my favorite anime genre). So I was more interested about Teknoman/Tekkaman Blade being on TV than anything else. Plus, I originally thought Sailor Moon would be just a "tame girly show" (my immature thoughts at the time, sorry! ), like Strawberry Shortcake.

[greg]

Last night I watched Jean de Arc, starring Milla Jovovich. This movie was a bit of a dud and didn't get a good reception, and now I see why. The acting was okay, but the movie takes a modern-day, secular stance and makes her crazy. She is known in history as a hero and a martyr, devoted to God, who was led by God to lead the French to victory over England in the Hundred Years War, but they couldn't resist making her out to be a paranoid, schizophrenic delusional. Luc Besson couldn't just make a movie to honor her character; he had to tear her down and make her look insane. I'm no expert on the subject, but I've known one paranoid schizophrenic delusional in my life. These people aren't really ones to inspire and lead others, and their broken mental processes betray their insanity pretty easily. Besson couldn't have just honored the character, so instead tore her down. It makes for a rather lousy story, since the protagonist of the movie turns out to be just a crazy person and her death was all for nothing. Whatever Besson's views on religion may be, the movie would have worked a lot better if Jean was portrayed positively, as an inspirational character who overcame great odds.

[llj]

I have a family member who has mild paranoid schizophrenia, and you're right, they're generally not very focused when they're suffering from one of their spells. It's certainly possible that the real life Jean had a mental instability of some sort, but it probably wasn't paranoid schizophrenia. At least the paranoid part. Whatever she had, it didn't disrupt her quality of life and her ability to live it, and one thing that schizophrenia definitely does is disrupt the quality of your life.

Anyway, I'm currently on a Jean Rollin odyssey. I've seen 3 of his movies recently--Shiver of the Vampires, Requiem for the Vampire, and Lips of Blood. I like his stuff--he's got a great eye for visual compositions, and he knows how to establish great mood and atmosphere, but he's definitely not for everyone. I'm also thinking of exploring some 80s slasher movies as well--not the well known ones, but the more obscure ones. I had no idea Canada produced a lot of slasher flicks in the 80s. I guess it's cheap and easy to do on a low budget.

[davemerrill]

I found that the worst thing about the Luc Besson Jean film (released here as "The Messenger") was Milla Jovovich's "acting". As in, it was l-o-u-s-y. Didn't really have a problem with her visions being depicted as symptomatic of mental illness- usually when people claim to be doing God's direct bidding, it's because they're crazy, and things don't work out so well for them, or for the rest of us if enough of us happen to be in a less than skeptical mood that day. Jovovich, however, was lousy at being crazy Joan, and lousy at being not-crazy Joan, and the rest of the film wasn't much better. I believe it was Besson's last high-profile directing gig.

Speaking of bad movies, we saw THE BLACK CAULDRON recently and it wasn't nearly as bad I remember it being. It's still not a good film by any means - there are parts of it that are fine, and other parts of it that aren't, and the liberties taken with the source material do not help things. But it's not as stinky as I recall, for what it's worth.

Last new movie we saw in theaters was THE CONJURING, which is an old-school haunted house devil posession film starring Joey King (star of RAMONA AND BEEZUS) and Ron "Office Space" Livingston and Lili "Valerie Solanis" Taylor that has lots of spooks but isn't too gory and it's set in the early 70s so you'll recognize all the artifacts. For once it's a horror picture that stars fairly nice people - nobody's an alcoholic spouse abuser or venal drug addict or struggling with Major Life Issues other than a terrifying house.

Yes I did see RAMONA AND BEEZUS. I read all those books when I was a kid. The movie gets a lot of it right and some of it wrong - there's this fakey romance between Beezus and Henry Huggins that is NOT SUPPORTED BY THE TEXT, but then again you put Selena Gomez in a movie and you have to have a boy for her to moon over, I suppose. Whatever, movie. At least Klikitat Street is front and center.

[kndy]

Finished watching Michael Haneke's "Amour". And for those who are familiar with Haneke's films, there is always a pervasive, unsettling mood about each of his films. In fact, you can always expect his films to shock you in some sort of way. And with his award-winning film "Amour", it is no exception. A non-sentimental film about long-lasting love but how that love can be tested. What happens when an elderly couple face the greatest challenge in their lives. A film that is among Haneke's most personal and one of his best, the film boasts magnificent performances from Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. But please do not be misguided by the title of the film and think this is a film about love or happy endings. The film is heartbreaking, bleak and even for me, quite difficult to watch. And even after watching it and typing this...it's not a film that I don't think I can forget. Unsettling... but definitely one of Haneke's best.



Watched "The Earrings of Madame de..." once again. This time with the 2012 restoration courtesy of Gaumont. Fantastic!



Watched Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" once again. One of my favorite films from the '90s that features characters that make bad decisions and a film that is full of witty humor, unpredictable and just an intriguing film with wonderful performances. Thrilled to see that the Criterion Collection has given this film a Blu-ray release!


Watched Amy Berg's "West of Memphis", one of the most bloodboiling documentaries that I have seen about a wrongful conviction. A shocking, powerful drama that is shocking but moreso that three young children have not received justice, despite the evidence pointing to one person and yet nothing has been done.


Ramin Bahrani has come a long way since his film "Chop Shop". Wanting to learn about where food comes from, he decided to go to Iowa and live and talk with farmers for six months to learn the business. What he learned was the great competition between farmers and how expansion is how families can survive in today's modern agriculture. Farmers who expand as landowners will survive and in the case of "At Any Price", also focusing on the problems that farmers face of their children not wanting to continue the family business. As many farmers are growing older and are dying, other farmers look at these farmers as prey, attending their funerals and offering families money to buy out their farmland but also the business revolving around genetically modified organisms seeds. If anything, "At Any Price" is Ramin Bahrani's biggest film so far and it features one of the beter performances from actor Dennis Quaid.