Gravity is a very good movie but I can't say that I liked it. It was exhausting and parts of it were too sad and all of it was too heavy and serious for my taste.
The visuals were fantastic and the acting was good enough for me to forget for the most part that I was watching actors. I think a making-of documentary about this movie would be very interesting.
When I first saw the trailer for Gravity I kind of thought "Well, I just saw the whole movie so I don't need to see that one" and I was kind of wrong. There was definitely a lot of movie other than what went on in the trailer but to me it all kind of felt like filler.
I'm just not the audience for this movie. It's supposed to be an incredibly harrowing and moving story and no matter how well it's done, that sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me.
As far as I was concerned there was a point, probably about twenty or thirty minutes in, where I felt like it could have ended and I would have been completely satisfied and probably also a sobbing mess on the floor.
So for me, I guess, it would have worked much better as a short than a feature. But, like I said, I am not the audience for Gravity.
End of line.
-Sally
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Friday, November 8, 2013
WNUF Halloween Special
I am not exactly easy to scare anymore. When I was a kid practically everything frightened me but I have grown up to be a gorehound horror fan who is easily bored and angered by "found footage" movies. I have a personal vendetta against The Blair Witch Project and I sincerely believe anyone who found Paranormal Activity scary is a little bit stupid. (Oooh, arguing and sleeping, I'm so scared!)
WNUF Halloween Special fucking got to me. It got under my skin. It was creepy and unsettling and even though it was chock full of unpleasant characters I was on the verge of tears by the end. For some reason this one succeeds where many others fail.
Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it! (Even if you're not into the "Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault" style investigating-a-supposedly-haunted-house news story angle, watch it for the spot-on 1987-style local commercials. They're beautiful. They are perfectly imagined little globules of the past.)
End of line.
-Sally
WNUF Halloween Special fucking got to me. It got under my skin. It was creepy and unsettling and even though it was chock full of unpleasant characters I was on the verge of tears by the end. For some reason this one succeeds where many others fail.
Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it! (Even if you're not into the "Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault" style investigating-a-supposedly-haunted-house news story angle, watch it for the spot-on 1987-style local commercials. They're beautiful. They are perfectly imagined little globules of the past.)
End of line.
-Sally
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters
This movie may as well not even exist.
I watched it on an airplane. It was the only movie in the Horror section of the plane's movie choices. I want to have a stern talking-to with whoever put it there because it is not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination.
I couldn't hear much of the dialogue but it turns out I didn't have to. At no point was I lost, dialogue or not.
The special effects were large, abundant and uninteresting.
Gretel is set up as a strong character and then spends the entire film needing to be rescued by men.
The highest compliment I can pay Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters is that Famke Janssen is in it. I like her. I think she's cool. I didn't like her character, I didn't think she even did all that great a job in it (she wasn't terrible, either; none of the actors were bad at all, it just wasn't a good movie), she just happened to be there and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
That and I laughed really hard when Gretel's ogretroll friend punched a guy's head off.
End of line.
-Sally
I watched it on an airplane. It was the only movie in the Horror section of the plane's movie choices. I want to have a stern talking-to with whoever put it there because it is not a horror movie by any stretch of the imagination.
I couldn't hear much of the dialogue but it turns out I didn't have to. At no point was I lost, dialogue or not.
The special effects were large, abundant and uninteresting.
Gretel is set up as a strong character and then spends the entire film needing to be rescued by men.
The highest compliment I can pay Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters is that Famke Janssen is in it. I like her. I think she's cool. I didn't like her character, I didn't think she even did all that great a job in it (she wasn't terrible, either; none of the actors were bad at all, it just wasn't a good movie), she just happened to be there and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
That and I laughed really hard when Gretel's ogretroll friend punched a guy's head off.
End of line.
-Sally
Wreck-It Ralph
Jeezus what a sad movie.
Everything involving Ralph made me sad. The whole beginning where all he wants is to be included and acknowledged as part of the game I was sitting there cringing, on the verge of tears, because I knew what he should have been saying to explain himself and he just kept saying the wrong things and making the situation worse and I couldn't leap in there and help him.
Everything involving Vanellope made me sad. At first I just flat out hated her because the way we're introduced to the character is her being an obnoxious jerk (and I just don't care for Sarah Silverman). Then we see her getting viciously picked on and even though I never totally warmed up to the character, every time something bad happened to her I wept. And a lot of bad things happen to her. The movie could have just as easily been called Gang Up On Vanellope.
So my overall feeling toward this movie is unimaginable sadness. There were great chunks of it that just plain hurt me to watch.
I was also annoyed that there wasn't a lot of game-hopping. I thought it was going to be a movie about Ralph going from game to game, all through the arcade, trying to become a hero, not Ralph going to one other game, then a second game and then just staying there the whole movie. That's boring!
I did, however, love Fix-It Felix and Calhoun. Both those characters were interesting and lovable (I wish I could say Ralph was lovable; I really wanted to like Ralph. But I just didn't. I didn't dislike him, either. He was just there and he made me feel sad) and their scenes together are the best in the movie.
I had planned on seeing Wreck-It Ralph ever since it came out but now that I've finally gotten around to it, I wish I hadn't bothered.
End of line.
-Sally
Everything involving Ralph made me sad. The whole beginning where all he wants is to be included and acknowledged as part of the game I was sitting there cringing, on the verge of tears, because I knew what he should have been saying to explain himself and he just kept saying the wrong things and making the situation worse and I couldn't leap in there and help him.
Everything involving Vanellope made me sad. At first I just flat out hated her because the way we're introduced to the character is her being an obnoxious jerk (and I just don't care for Sarah Silverman). Then we see her getting viciously picked on and even though I never totally warmed up to the character, every time something bad happened to her I wept. And a lot of bad things happen to her. The movie could have just as easily been called Gang Up On Vanellope.
So my overall feeling toward this movie is unimaginable sadness. There were great chunks of it that just plain hurt me to watch.
I was also annoyed that there wasn't a lot of game-hopping. I thought it was going to be a movie about Ralph going from game to game, all through the arcade, trying to become a hero, not Ralph going to one other game, then a second game and then just staying there the whole movie. That's boring!
I did, however, love Fix-It Felix and Calhoun. Both those characters were interesting and lovable (I wish I could say Ralph was lovable; I really wanted to like Ralph. But I just didn't. I didn't dislike him, either. He was just there and he made me feel sad) and their scenes together are the best in the movie.
I had planned on seeing Wreck-It Ralph ever since it came out but now that I've finally gotten around to it, I wish I hadn't bothered.
End of line.
-Sally
The Woman In Black
I saw the movie of The Woman In Black back when it came out and was not terribly impressed by it but liked the story enough that I decided to go see the play while I was in London.
The play is a lot better than the movie, more interesting a creepier, and I considered going to see it a second time while I was there. (Didn't actually make it, but I did think about it.)
That being said, creepy things are a lot less creepy when a theaterful of teenage girls screams at every single tiny little thing and makes the next several lines of dialogue impossible to hear.
There's also a thing that happens in the play that I think is supposed to be a surprise but is pretty obvious from the moment it's set up much earlier in the show, and it makes the whole thing very sad.
I still highly recommend going to see it if you happen to be in London. Just try to go to a performance that isn't full of teenage girls.
End of line.
-Sally
The play is a lot better than the movie, more interesting a creepier, and I considered going to see it a second time while I was there. (Didn't actually make it, but I did think about it.)
That being said, creepy things are a lot less creepy when a theaterful of teenage girls screams at every single tiny little thing and makes the next several lines of dialogue impossible to hear.
There's also a thing that happens in the play that I think is supposed to be a surprise but is pretty obvious from the moment it's set up much earlier in the show, and it makes the whole thing very sad.
I still highly recommend going to see it if you happen to be in London. Just try to go to a performance that isn't full of teenage girls.
End of line.
-Sally
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Django Unchained
Last week I took a trip to England and watched more movies on that trip than I had in months, starting with Django Unchained on the plane ride to London.
I had been meaning to see this movie since it came out but apparently I didn't mean to that much, since it took me almost a year (or however long it's been) to actually get around to seeing it. On a plane. Because it was the closest thing to a worthwhile movie they had to choose from.
I liked it.
Quentin Tarantino is very hit-or-miss for me; I loved Reservoir Dogs, liked Kill Bill, loved Grindhouse but prefer the parts he had little-to-nothing to do with. On the flipside, I don't care for Pulp Fiction, never saw Jackie Brown and can't come up with a third example to go here.
Django Unchained falls into the "good" half of the Tarantino repertoire but, that being said, I barely remember it now. I know it had some brilliant moments and I liked Christoph Waltz's character in particular.
But my opinion doesn't go any deeper than that. Of the three movies I watched on airplanes this trip, it was certainly the best but I'm also struggling to come up with anything to say about it.
Make of that what you will.
(In all fairness, I was on a red-eye flight and was very tired when I watched it. My lack of anything to say could be based on the fact that I fell asleep about five minutes after it ended.)
End of line.
-Sally
I had been meaning to see this movie since it came out but apparently I didn't mean to that much, since it took me almost a year (or however long it's been) to actually get around to seeing it. On a plane. Because it was the closest thing to a worthwhile movie they had to choose from.
I liked it.
Quentin Tarantino is very hit-or-miss for me; I loved Reservoir Dogs, liked Kill Bill, loved Grindhouse but prefer the parts he had little-to-nothing to do with. On the flipside, I don't care for Pulp Fiction, never saw Jackie Brown and can't come up with a third example to go here.
Django Unchained falls into the "good" half of the Tarantino repertoire but, that being said, I barely remember it now. I know it had some brilliant moments and I liked Christoph Waltz's character in particular.
But my opinion doesn't go any deeper than that. Of the three movies I watched on airplanes this trip, it was certainly the best but I'm also struggling to come up with anything to say about it.
Make of that what you will.
(In all fairness, I was on a red-eye flight and was very tired when I watched it. My lack of anything to say could be based on the fact that I fell asleep about five minutes after it ended.)
End of line.
-Sally
Sunday, September 8, 2013
The Lords Of Salem
The novel this time, not the movie.
What I mainly want to say is that I think it's fascinating that Rob Zombie managed to tell essentially the same story that the movie tells but with almost none of the same things happening.
Where the movie is beautiful and hypnotic, the book is mostly just kind of gross. I'm sure if what's in the book had been put into the movie, I still would have liked it. But I don't think I would have loved it the way I love the movie.
The book tells more than the movie does, explains more about the effect that the Lords's music has on the women of Salem, which was interesting. But something about that, something about the drastically different dream sequences and the only-vaguely-similar scene progression didn't sit right with me.
They're very different entities.
I like the movie much, much better. (I wonder what the verdict would have been if I had read the book first.)
End of line.
-Sally
What I mainly want to say is that I think it's fascinating that Rob Zombie managed to tell essentially the same story that the movie tells but with almost none of the same things happening.
Where the movie is beautiful and hypnotic, the book is mostly just kind of gross. I'm sure if what's in the book had been put into the movie, I still would have liked it. But I don't think I would have loved it the way I love the movie.
The book tells more than the movie does, explains more about the effect that the Lords's music has on the women of Salem, which was interesting. But something about that, something about the drastically different dream sequences and the only-vaguely-similar scene progression didn't sit right with me.
They're very different entities.
I like the movie much, much better. (I wonder what the verdict would have been if I had read the book first.)
End of line.
-Sally
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