Movie recommendations

No way! That's one of my favorite movies. That and the other great Leone movie Once Upon a Time in the West. Leone's America movie has a good script, excellent acting, great plot and an awesome soundtrack. Well, that's my two cent opinion.

Agreed. Not hip to admit it but it is deathly. However, Once Upon A Time In The West is a different kettle of fish - one of the best Westerns ever filmed, and Henry Fonda way out of his normal style as a mean motherfucker baddie.

Saw a couple of good ones over the holidays:

Idiocracy Its a comedy, but I like to pretend its a documentary about what happens in the future if the current trend of stupider people breeding faster than clever people continues.

Ted Bundy Based on the true story of the famous serial killer. Was a lot better than I thought it would be, some fairly brutal scenes though.

The Good Shepherd Movie about some of what went on in the early days of the CIA. Its very loosely based on real life people and events. Pretty good story.

Thanks for that, man. I like to check out The Good Shepherd. I saw the interview Larry King had with De Niro, Jolie and Damon a week ago. Critics are giving the movie so-so reviews, but that won't put me off. Looking at the trailer now...

Cannibal Holocaust
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma

Hi, I am very new in Munich and in this chat :-)
I would like to ask if any of you saw this Borat funny movie.
I would like to see it but I don't know where.
Any ideas?
Thanks

Have a look at these comments, Amelia: Borat - the movie. It's a good movie. I liked it.

Hmm! I really want to see the movie. But where? Any ideas? Is already on DVD?

Some Kind Of Monster
Documentary about Metallica as the band started to fall apart. If you hate their music you will still find this film amazing. Sometimes funny(think Spinal Tap), sometimes shocking, but always interesting and stunningly honest.
Watch it.

I think -and I'll need to double-check this - that the Borat movie will be available on DVD March 2nd. Still about a couple of months away if the information I heard is correct. Can't help you with information about movie theaters that may be currently playing it, sorry. I rarely go to them.

What about cinema?Where can I see it?
Someboy can help me with this please

Henry Fool
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
The Quiet Family
Koroshiya 1
The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover

Okay, Amelia, try here: Leopold Muenchen. Hope that's not too far away from your place. Looks like it's playing there tomorrow and Tuesday night. Contact them first if you can just to be sure.

That was a good if somewhat bizarre film. I like Greenaway's work; clever dialog & the camera continuously panning sideways along the scenes. Also check out The Draughtsman's Contract and Drowning By Numbers. But I wouldn't recommend Prospero's Books or The Belly of an Architect.

Glengarry Glen Ross. I love this movie. It was a successful David Mamet play adapted to the screen. Mamet wrote the screenplay for Ronin, and assisted on - another favorite of mine - Wag the Dog. Check out Glengarry Glen Ross if you're into good acting and dialog (not a film for action lovers). It stars Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin and Jonathan Pryce.

If you like the Rocky series then you will love Rocky Balboa. A real trip down memory lane and a nice "feel good" film. The idea sounds propostorous but works well.

I've heard a lot of good things about Stallone's new Rocky movie, and am as surprised as a lot of people. So much so that it's on my list to check out. Even Rotten Tomatoes rates it 77% fresh.

The new Rocky is shit, but Apocalypto is fucking awesome!

(Another movie, fairly old now, that I had never heard of, and just saw recently deserves a recommendation too. Carlito's Way is damn good too, nearly as good as Godfather 2 and up there with Scarface. Can't believe I never heard of it til recently)

New movies I've seen and would NOT recommend: Blood Diamond, The Queen, Rocky Balboa, Idiocracy, Saw III, We Are Marshall.

Movies I'd recommend that I've seen recently: Crank

(not much has been good lately...)

Here are my recent movie (DVD) recommendations:

Lucky # Slevin
Excellent cast, funny dialog and some pretty cool twists. I'm not a fan of Josh Harnett. After Pearl Harbor (which I never saw all of), I just didn't get all the hype. I'm waiting to watch Black Dalia, but otherwise, he's definitely not my type, but here, he is pretty good. I doubt I'd go see a movie just cause he's in it, but I'd consider it.

Crank
This is just a fast-paced action flick with some humor. Nothing more than that. Neat camera footage. It's also interesting what "Chev" does to keep his adrenalin pumping. Oh and Dwight Yokhum plays his doctor.

I you like "lock stock" and "snatch" I would certainly recommend "Love, honour and obey" - great film

If you get a chance to see the Swedish film Så som i himmelen (English subtitles!), don't miss it. Great flick.

Full Metal Village - One of the funniest films/documentaries I have seen in quite a while (I had tears coming out of my eyes from laughing so hard at some of the scenes). The plot in a nutshell: Sleepy village (Wacken, Schleswig Holstein) plays host to an annual heavy metal festival. The viewer sees the everyday lives of the people who live in this town and how they deal with being swamped by approximately 60,000 metal heads every year.

I saw Scoop tonight, really funny. Good movie!

Seconded! :-)

EDIT: I want to note for our fellow Toytowners that even though this movie is marketed as a German Heimatfilm, it has neither goats nor sheep in it (not even sex!). Oxen are about the only cattle you will see. (If you do not count the metal heads, that is.)

Wacken reminds me of Lord of the Weed.

Happy Feet.

I fucking love those Mexican penguins.

I found this a very nice movie, too. Great character development, great editing, and breathtaking choir music.

Running scared

Revolver

The Child - L'Enfant
Once
Planet Terror
Ratatouille
La Haine

What I would say would spare you a few hours from your life not seeing...it's hard, my taste may not correlate to yours. What I may see as brilliant may be your detritus. What you see as brilliance and pure entertainment may be complete tripe to me. But such is life.

Resident Evil 3 - impossibly crap. Even for zombie fans. Such a melange of cliches, if you went in with a timetable to accompany your viewing, you ncould note things like SCARE@029:58. And go figure after that. Horror films have gotten a bad deal the past few years, the genres have been prettified and transformed into action throwaways, from the RE inserts to Anne Rice ne'er-function outside an increasingly vague niche audience ((sorry UA - QOTD is atrocious). Hostel is not horror, it's exploitation. The Thing, Day Of The Dead, The Haunting, Near Dark, The Beyond, The Last Winter. That's horror. 28 Days/Weeks/Menstruation Cycles are thrillers. The Saws are consistent genre-pieces but in light of the current rejuvenation of exploitation cinema, it's debatable if they're true horror films.

30 Days Of Night looks like it'll reanimate perceptions of vampires, not things to seduce you, just organisms feeding, apex-level predators that are smarter than just needing to shag the next piece of photogenics. Seldom anticipated a film like that one. Looks scary as fuck. I hope to have an embolism watching it.

Death Proof (Jesus, is it possible that Tarantino could make a film that wanky and crap? Yes. Avoid.)
Happy Feet. Dreadfull. See The Incredibles, Monsters Inc., The Iron Giant for animation with real heart. In fact, just watch The Iron Giant. If you don't cry watching it, there's something wrong with you.

If you dont like foreign movies, this is probably not for you. Im restricting my recommendations to japanese cinema, as they made some fantastic movies that most people never have heard of.

(1) Hotaru no Haka - Grave of the Fireflies
A very very sad anime for adults about the fate of children in wartime. If you dont trust me, maybe you listen to Roger Ebert.
(avoid the dubbed version, see the original with english subtitles, as the japanese voice actors are a thousand times better)

(2) Afterlife

(3) Hana-bi - Fireworks

First post and all that...

A number of films to recommend here but all by the same director - David Lynch. Seriously, this guy is a genious. Absolutely love every single thing the man has done, from Eraserhead to his latest work Inland Empire.

Hear, hear. I totally agree.
Love 'em all. I watch Lynch's Blue Velvet most, but they're really all great.

Coward

Once

Absolutely awesome awesome movie.

Seconded, lovely wee flick, great soundtrack.

I thoroughly recommend Atonement (2007). A brilliant movie based on Ian McEwan's excellent novel which I'm reading at the moment. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it wins the Best Picture Oscar later this month.

Joe Wright's directing of this feature is superb, the acting is admirable and Chris Hampton's screenplay is gripping. There are some exceptional tracking shots throughout this movie, including this roving shot during the Dunkirk scene:

Atonement (2007) - Dunkirk Scene

That scene in Atonement is monumental. A 4 minute tracking shot in a war film? Amazing so much action, extras. Damn, the production value is just amazing.

My favorite films of the year:
No Country For Old Men
3:10 to Yuma
Atonement
Superbad
Eastern Promises
Once
Knocked Up

The Band's Visit.

The Band's Visit looks like a good one. Thanks for the tip.

Here's a bit of gossip from the movie world that might interest sci-fi fans, especially those who like the Terminator franchise:

Is Josh Brolin The Terminator? McG Drops a Possible Hint


I think Brolin would make a great hero or villain Terminator in the upcoming Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins (2009), should he be selected. But McG as the director? Hmmm.


_{Josh Brolin}

Definitely worth checking out, as good a film as any last year. Also, for the first time in years, fell in love with an actress, she was playing a part that I could understand. A maaaaaaaaaaannnn, a man needs some suede. Oh Ronit. Be still my vagrant heart.

If that McG guy gets near the Terminator film franchise...Buddha suppurated. Directors like that (Paul Anderson, Uwe Boll et al) have their niche but injecting innovation, intelligence and proper respect for the originals hasn't been their forte. And McG is firmly up there with them, in my book. If not worse as he's a consummate plagiarist and Camerons "blessing" may be enough rope for this cowboy to hang the Terminator series on the same gallows that AVP reserved. Unless he decides to/can seriously up his game. This should go to Christopher Nolan or Richard Kelly, even Aronofsky or a similarly inclined filmmaker. Even Tarantino, that'd be interesting. I'd nearly say Gondry but the last time a clever French filmmaker got near a respected SCi-Fi franchise, the result wasn't exactly stellar - gets into Gilliam territory. But not this monied, glorified midrange MTV videomaker. Apropos, Chris Cunningham. Now that'd be inspired. But no, McG is not the man for the job, IMHO.

Actually, Chris Cunningham would be my preference to direct a new Terminator film.

Sure the guy's responsible for those abhorrent Charlie's Angels films, but comparing him to Uwe Boll is like comparing John Major to Adolf Hitler. That said, he's executive producer on Chuck, which has been a great little TV show so I'm willing to give him some slack. Not looking forward to it at all to be honest though, Terminator 3 left a sour taste in my mouth.

Juno and The Bucket List.
I saw these this week, both really enjoyable movies, funny but not shallow.

I haven't seen the Bucket List yet, but I'll agree with you on Juno. Great film.

I wonder if its ok to recommend documentaries. I would highly recommend "The rise of the politics of fear", a series of 4 parts. It is a look at the political origins of the current war on terror. What makes it interesting is that it traces the origins of both sides, the terrorists and the 'warriors' guiding the war. Here is a BBC link that describes this documentary in greater detail.

For those who like foreign movies, someone has already recommended Takeshi Kitano's Hana-Bi, and i fully support the recommendation. Just don't watch 'Dolls' by the same director.

Japanese anime: "Ghost in the shell" and "Ghost in the shell part 2- Innocence". The animation is the best I have ever seen. The colours are sumptuous, the detail awe inspiring, and the storyline complex. Even those who are not really into anime will be converted.

Chinese movies: Zhang Yimou's movies are the best known, like Hero, Raise the red Lantern, Red Sorghum, etc. These are all a good place to start, for something very different from Kung Fu and history, see the movie "Suzhou River" by Lou Ye. It is set in contemporary Shanghai, and is filmed in a very film noir style, the camera work is great. And it shows a side of China, that is usually not visible in the other movies that come out of there.

Here's another movie I'd recommend: Michael Clayton (2007). It's not some childish action-packed, shoot 'em up kinda flick, but an enthralling and intelligent adult thriller. I sat to watch it twice this weekend and found myself drawn into the remarkable story. The movie reminded me of Erin Brockovich and The Insider, but it's only vaguely similar to the two and, unlike Brockovich and Insider, is purely fictitious (the screenplay was written by the director). This is the directorial debut Tony Gilroy, the man who wrote the screenplays for the Bourne movies, and he's done a magnificent job with the direction of this movie.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a "Fixer", a lawyer who's hired to repair problems his law firm's clients are involved in, including a big problem involving a major corporation responsible for a cancer-causing agricultural product. We also witness problems in his own personal life such as his divorce, gambling, a failed business venture, his debts, etc.

Along with Clooney, Sydney Pollack also stars (both he and Clooney were producers of the movie with Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella) and British actors Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson. Tom Wilkinson's performance as a bipolar lawyer who's stopped taking his medication and has a kind of epiphany of sorts is simply brilliant. James Newton Howard's music is hauntingly beautiful, and Robert Elswit's photography is excellent (the scenes with George Clooney standing in front of the three horses and Tom Wilkinson walking among the neon signs at night are so striking).

It's a good enough film to see on DVD, and though it's one of the five nominees as Best Picture for this year's Oscars, I don't think it'll win (I'm leaning towards Atonement as the winner).



Michael Clayton (2007) - Trailer:

The last good movie i saw was:: the Nines, definitly think its n must see...

well just been at a prescreening of 27 dresses and well yes its a typicall chick flick but its hilarious... had to laugh soooooo much... deffo worth watching it...well for the girls at least...

There Will Be Blood.

If you like films where the war-gore factor of, say, Saving Private Ryan, is increased by a cartoon factor of 3,500, then Rambo may just be the one for you.

If the sight of hordes of Burmese soldiers being literally shredded by a jeep-mounted 50 cal for roughly 10 minutes of unrelenting carnage, dismemberment, heavy calibre sniper rounds decapitating, home-made machete disembowelment and reduction of the aforementioned soldiers to bloody vapours and human offal, isn't the kind of thing to get you off the couch and into a cinema, then don't. Fellini it is not.

It's really quite ridiculously violent. It approaches Brain Dead/Dead Alive in terms of OTT gore.