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re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread
Posted on 11/16/11 at 7:21 am to TulaneLSU
Posted on 11/16/11 at 7:21 am to TulaneLSU
The King's Speech A great triumph of cinematic docu-drama. It brings history and drama together like never before. You will leave this movie identifying with at least one character at least at some point in your life. The soundtrack is almost as marvelous as the performances. 9/10
Larry Crowne You know what, Hanks and Roberts have a real chemistry in this movie, but it's not romantic. It's more like the relationship Hanks has with that toy exec chick in Big. They try to force the romance angle, but it's acute and eventually it closes as a straight line. While I appreciate Hanks' positive, go-get-em attitude, it doesn't come off as very sincere and fails to plumb the depths of human disappointment. Are there people who are so look-on-the-bright-side in this world? Perhaps, but movies about them aren't good theater. 4/10
Little Fockers Meet the Parents should have stopped with the original. This movie does nothing new and repeats the same, tired jokes again and again. Do comic writers think audiences are so unfunny? I didn't chuckle once and found every character to be annoying. Alba is terrible. 3/10
Margin Call Several years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had lunch with one of the foremost investors of the 20th century. When one of my friends had seen with whom I had lunch, he rushed to ask me questions, specifically about money. "Did he tell you how to invest?" and so forth. "No, no he didn't. Money did not enter our conversation once." One might say that the conversation had been on spirituality. Specifically, we talked about what we can know about God and what can be learned about God through many religions. Money for this man, in my brief encounter with him, was not why he lived. At least not at that point in his life.
In an important conversation near the end of Margin Call, the cormorant owner of this investment group has these words to a disillusioned, surly stock pusher, a man who felt, in the words of Hugo, "the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony": "It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong." His words ring as truth, a thought uttered by many of the saints of the world: money is nothing. And those who devote their lives to it become nothing. That much is consistent with all the world's major religions. But his words also ring as platitudinous, for that man had clambered all his life for money and there was no regret or turning from this idol. This man and the man with whom I shared lunch were not of the same ilk.
Margin Call, like Wall Street II and Company Men, is placed in the troublesome days of early Autumn, 2008 when the world's economic bubble was ready to burst. Each of these movies has tried to capture the greed that led up to the financial collapse, but none has been as successful as Margin Call. Why? Precisely because in the other two movies, we are given characters that the hoi polloi, the occupant 99%, are supposed to hate. The motivation with their main characters is personal greed. Margin Call is not so simplistic, and so, much more believable. The film is at its finest when developing the complex characters involved in this fictitious histo-drama. We get to know seven characters very well, a feat in itself for a movie of this length. And for each, our initial impressions are not our final impressions. The movie, in that sense, is shocking. A man we believe to be a terrible villain in the opening scenes, we will come to pity at the end. Because at the end, we see that the Jewish vision of labor has triumphed over the Roman view, which has since been adopted by the West, sadly, and to the detriment of culture and charity. This character brings us there, the place where button pushing is replaced by heart-breaking, back-breaking work. The entire cast is formidable and impressive except Demi Moore. She gives an encore performance to Disclosure, which is equally as bad. She doesn't deserve to be in another film.
Is this a movie about money? Only in form. In substance, it is a movie about our own motivations in life. By examining the motivation of others, their raison d'être, reason for being, it gives each of us a good opportunity to re-examine what motivates us. And I hope we will be able to move past money, obviously, but even past building bridges and digging holes. Our reason is far greater than our work of this sort. Only when our work is solely a work of love has our reason become exalted and pleasing. 8/10
Larry Crowne You know what, Hanks and Roberts have a real chemistry in this movie, but it's not romantic. It's more like the relationship Hanks has with that toy exec chick in Big. They try to force the romance angle, but it's acute and eventually it closes as a straight line. While I appreciate Hanks' positive, go-get-em attitude, it doesn't come off as very sincere and fails to plumb the depths of human disappointment. Are there people who are so look-on-the-bright-side in this world? Perhaps, but movies about them aren't good theater. 4/10
Little Fockers Meet the Parents should have stopped with the original. This movie does nothing new and repeats the same, tired jokes again and again. Do comic writers think audiences are so unfunny? I didn't chuckle once and found every character to be annoying. Alba is terrible. 3/10
Margin Call Several years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had lunch with one of the foremost investors of the 20th century. When one of my friends had seen with whom I had lunch, he rushed to ask me questions, specifically about money. "Did he tell you how to invest?" and so forth. "No, no he didn't. Money did not enter our conversation once." One might say that the conversation had been on spirituality. Specifically, we talked about what we can know about God and what can be learned about God through many religions. Money for this man, in my brief encounter with him, was not why he lived. At least not at that point in his life.
In an important conversation near the end of Margin Call, the cormorant owner of this investment group has these words to a disillusioned, surly stock pusher, a man who felt, in the words of Hugo, "the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony": "It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong." His words ring as truth, a thought uttered by many of the saints of the world: money is nothing. And those who devote their lives to it become nothing. That much is consistent with all the world's major religions. But his words also ring as platitudinous, for that man had clambered all his life for money and there was no regret or turning from this idol. This man and the man with whom I shared lunch were not of the same ilk.
Margin Call, like Wall Street II and Company Men, is placed in the troublesome days of early Autumn, 2008 when the world's economic bubble was ready to burst. Each of these movies has tried to capture the greed that led up to the financial collapse, but none has been as successful as Margin Call. Why? Precisely because in the other two movies, we are given characters that the hoi polloi, the occupant 99%, are supposed to hate. The motivation with their main characters is personal greed. Margin Call is not so simplistic, and so, much more believable. The film is at its finest when developing the complex characters involved in this fictitious histo-drama. We get to know seven characters very well, a feat in itself for a movie of this length. And for each, our initial impressions are not our final impressions. The movie, in that sense, is shocking. A man we believe to be a terrible villain in the opening scenes, we will come to pity at the end. Because at the end, we see that the Jewish vision of labor has triumphed over the Roman view, which has since been adopted by the West, sadly, and to the detriment of culture and charity. This character brings us there, the place where button pushing is replaced by heart-breaking, back-breaking work. The entire cast is formidable and impressive except Demi Moore. She gives an encore performance to Disclosure, which is equally as bad. She doesn't deserve to be in another film.
Is this a movie about money? Only in form. In substance, it is a movie about our own motivations in life. By examining the motivation of others, their raison d'être, reason for being, it gives each of us a good opportunity to re-examine what motivates us. And I hope we will be able to move past money, obviously, but even past building bridges and digging holes. Our reason is far greater than our work of this sort. Only when our work is solely a work of love has our reason become exalted and pleasing. 8/10
This post was edited on 11/16/11 at 7:37 am
2
Posted on 11/16/11 at 7:21 am to TulaneLSU
The Mechanic the best thing about this movie is it's filmed in New Orleans. Watching it, I was more attuned to figuring out which building or where in the city they were set. The movie has way too much blood and violence to recommend. The story is interesting enough and Straham or whatever his name plays the role well, but the movie has no message except killing. Hard to recommend a movie like that. It moves fast and is tightly knit, but the lack of a worthwhile theme makes this a bust. 3/10
Megamind It's been a couple of months since seeing this, but thought it was decent. I'm glad they reduced the role of Brad Pitt. Even though it's animation, it is a romance movie, not a kid's movie. The love Megamind has for Ms. Palin is admirable and I came to feel for the guy. 6/10
Moneyball If you think you're going to see a movie about baseball, think again. The baseball scenes are sparse and not good. This movie is about one thing and one thing only: faith despite the evidence and tradition. 3,000 or so years ago, or maybe never, a man named Abram lived. And God approached this man, telling him that if he were to leave his home, God would bless him with a new land and many descendants, despite his wife's old age and barrenness. At the time, it looked like a ridiculous commitment only a fool would make. There was no evidence that hinted that the decision would pay dividends. But Abram packed his bags and headed out, probably to the consternation and ridicule of all his neighbors who mocked him as a mad man. Faith for Abram, Karl Barth, and possibly Billy Beane was believing in something despite all the evidence, and standing back, and watching all the evidence change.
In that way, this movie is much more about a Copernican Revolution, a Abrahamic Revolution, really, than it is about baseball. Without question, this writer was influenced by Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which has deservedly become reading for college freshmen across the disciplines, so much so that the paradigm shifts it discusses have almost become cliche' in conversation. In the book, Kuhn uses history to show how normal science is governed by faith, even if its followers claim a lack of faith. Faith in a system and a method, faith in a certain ordering of ideas, is how each school of science becomes dominant, and the assumptions of that school become dogmatic, which is not meant to be used in a pejorative sense. But every system of belief has flaws and will face stalemate. Eventually, a revolutionary questions the assumptions of science to create a new form of science. This is the revolution, the paradigm shift.
Moneyball seeks through the superficial relationship between the plenipotentiary general manager of the A's, Brad Pitt, (Billy Beane) and his head scout and head coach to show a revolutionary butting heads with tradition. But the interplay doesn't work because from the get-go, the old guard is cast in a mocking way. We're never given time or reason to support anyone but Pitt and his way of thinking. Thanks to the overly revealing trailer, we know all the smart lines and ending before the beginning. Pitt is the hero and the movie is agitprop to build the hero. In that sense, the movie is one-faced, simple, and doesn't give justice to the other side, which a good drama demands. The scenes from Pitt's past don't add anything to the character or story, though the director tries to force an interpretation down our throats, but to no avail. Even more superfluous and useless is the weak attempt to bring Pitt's family into the movie. Pitt is not well cast here; his strength is shown when he plays the bad guy with the good heart, not the innovator. His relationship to Jonah Hill, whose me'tier is numbers, is clumsy. Hill is the real hero in the story, yet he is cast to the side as a troll. The only thing that really works is the message: that in order to bring real change, you need a faith in something higher than yourself because the ridicule and rejection the prophet faces is too much for one person to carry alone. Too bad Pitt's character is left as a shadow and the audience in the dark about why he believes the new system will work. 4/10
Monte Carlo I felt my soul being destroyed by this cooked u,p sentimental life-is-better with-what-you-have snoozer. It's all a crock. The message makes no sense in the movie's backdrop.
How do these girls pretend to be pleased with what they already have? For instance, Selena, she finds happiness after returning to Europe??? How does a five dollar an hour waitress afford to go back to Europe just weeks after her first trip to Europe? And her clothes? Sorry, but when you're making what she does, you're happy to have a place to sleep at night.
The other girl, the one from The Roommate, who by the way is not attractive at all, she lets go of all her pain by traveling around the world for a few months with some ex rugby player who has chicken legs, so unbelievable. How does she afford that? And how is travel throughout the world consistent with be happy with what you have? Does the producer have any clue how expensive it is to do what she did at the end? She's nothing but a hitched Julie Roberts from Eat Pray Love. She'll get tired of her new found boy, have an epiphany, and even though she's in great debt from her college education that she doesn't use for a job, she'll continue to travel.
And that last blonde, the real skanky one who cheats on her boyfriend by going out on date after date in Europe. Do we really buy that it's only through cheating that we find who we truly love? If I were her boyfriend and found those flowers, I would have kicked her skank arse to the curb. Damn whore. So what if that French guy on the boat hadn't been a jerk? Does that mean she would have fallen in love with him?
This movie is a kid's version of Eat Pray Love and totally contradicting to itself. I could have written a better script in 30 minutes. 2/10
Megamind It's been a couple of months since seeing this, but thought it was decent. I'm glad they reduced the role of Brad Pitt. Even though it's animation, it is a romance movie, not a kid's movie. The love Megamind has for Ms. Palin is admirable and I came to feel for the guy. 6/10
Moneyball If you think you're going to see a movie about baseball, think again. The baseball scenes are sparse and not good. This movie is about one thing and one thing only: faith despite the evidence and tradition. 3,000 or so years ago, or maybe never, a man named Abram lived. And God approached this man, telling him that if he were to leave his home, God would bless him with a new land and many descendants, despite his wife's old age and barrenness. At the time, it looked like a ridiculous commitment only a fool would make. There was no evidence that hinted that the decision would pay dividends. But Abram packed his bags and headed out, probably to the consternation and ridicule of all his neighbors who mocked him as a mad man. Faith for Abram, Karl Barth, and possibly Billy Beane was believing in something despite all the evidence, and standing back, and watching all the evidence change.
In that way, this movie is much more about a Copernican Revolution, a Abrahamic Revolution, really, than it is about baseball. Without question, this writer was influenced by Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which has deservedly become reading for college freshmen across the disciplines, so much so that the paradigm shifts it discusses have almost become cliche' in conversation. In the book, Kuhn uses history to show how normal science is governed by faith, even if its followers claim a lack of faith. Faith in a system and a method, faith in a certain ordering of ideas, is how each school of science becomes dominant, and the assumptions of that school become dogmatic, which is not meant to be used in a pejorative sense. But every system of belief has flaws and will face stalemate. Eventually, a revolutionary questions the assumptions of science to create a new form of science. This is the revolution, the paradigm shift.
Moneyball seeks through the superficial relationship between the plenipotentiary general manager of the A's, Brad Pitt, (Billy Beane) and his head scout and head coach to show a revolutionary butting heads with tradition. But the interplay doesn't work because from the get-go, the old guard is cast in a mocking way. We're never given time or reason to support anyone but Pitt and his way of thinking. Thanks to the overly revealing trailer, we know all the smart lines and ending before the beginning. Pitt is the hero and the movie is agitprop to build the hero. In that sense, the movie is one-faced, simple, and doesn't give justice to the other side, which a good drama demands. The scenes from Pitt's past don't add anything to the character or story, though the director tries to force an interpretation down our throats, but to no avail. Even more superfluous and useless is the weak attempt to bring Pitt's family into the movie. Pitt is not well cast here; his strength is shown when he plays the bad guy with the good heart, not the innovator. His relationship to Jonah Hill, whose me'tier is numbers, is clumsy. Hill is the real hero in the story, yet he is cast to the side as a troll. The only thing that really works is the message: that in order to bring real change, you need a faith in something higher than yourself because the ridicule and rejection the prophet faces is too much for one person to carry alone. Too bad Pitt's character is left as a shadow and the audience in the dark about why he believes the new system will work. 4/10
Monte Carlo I felt my soul being destroyed by this cooked u,p sentimental life-is-better with-what-you-have snoozer. It's all a crock. The message makes no sense in the movie's backdrop.
How do these girls pretend to be pleased with what they already have? For instance, Selena, she finds happiness after returning to Europe??? How does a five dollar an hour waitress afford to go back to Europe just weeks after her first trip to Europe? And her clothes? Sorry, but when you're making what she does, you're happy to have a place to sleep at night.
The other girl, the one from The Roommate, who by the way is not attractive at all, she lets go of all her pain by traveling around the world for a few months with some ex rugby player who has chicken legs, so unbelievable. How does she afford that? And how is travel throughout the world consistent with be happy with what you have? Does the producer have any clue how expensive it is to do what she did at the end? She's nothing but a hitched Julie Roberts from Eat Pray Love. She'll get tired of her new found boy, have an epiphany, and even though she's in great debt from her college education that she doesn't use for a job, she'll continue to travel.
And that last blonde, the real skanky one who cheats on her boyfriend by going out on date after date in Europe. Do we really buy that it's only through cheating that we find who we truly love? If I were her boyfriend and found those flowers, I would have kicked her skank arse to the curb. Damn whore. So what if that French guy on the boat hadn't been a jerk? Does that mean she would have fallen in love with him?
This movie is a kid's version of Eat Pray Love and totally contradicting to itself. I could have written a better script in 30 minutes. 2/10
This post was edited on 11/16/11 at 7:30 am
Posted on 12/13/11 at 12:56 pm to TulaneLSU
quote:
The King's Speech A great triumph of cinematic docu-drama. It brings history and drama together like never before. You will leave this movie identifying with at least one character at least at some point in your life. The soundtrack is almost as marvelous as the performances. 9/10
Larry Crowne You know what, Hanks and Roberts have a real chemistry in this movie, but it's not romantic. It's more like the relationship Hanks has with that toy exec chick in Big. They try to force the romance angle, but it's acute and eventually it closes as a straight line. While I appreciate Hanks' positive, go-get-em attitude, it doesn't come off as very sincere and fails to plumb the depths of human disappointment. Are there people who are so look-on-the-bright-side in this world? Perhaps, but movies about them aren't good theater. 4/10
Little Fockers Meet the Parents should have stopped with the original. This movie does nothing new and repeats the same, tired jokes again and again. Do comic writers think audiences are so unfunny? I didn't chuckle once and found every character to be annoying. Alba is terrible. 3/10
Margin Call Several years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had lunch with one of the foremost investors of the 20th century. When one of my friends had seen with whom I had lunch, he rushed to ask me questions, specifically about money. "Did he tell you how to invest?" and so forth. "No, no he didn't. Money did not enter our conversation once." One might say that the conversation had been on spirituality. Specifically, we talked about what we can know about God and what can be learned about God through many religions. Money for this man, in my brief encounter with him, was not why he lived. At least not at that point in his life.
In an important conversation near the end of Margin Call, the cormorant owner of this investment group has these words to a disillusioned, surly stock pusher, a man who felt, in the words of Hugo, "the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony": "It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong." His words ring as truth, a thought uttered by many of the saints of the world: money is nothing. And those who devote their lives to it become nothing. That much is consistent with all the world's major religions. But his words also ring as platitudinous, for that man had clambered all his life for money and there was no regret or turning from this idol. This man and the man with whom I shared lunch were not of the same ilk.
Margin Call, like Wall Street II and Company Men, is placed in the troublesome days of early Autumn, 2008 when the world's economic bubble was ready to burst. Each of these movies has tried to capture the greed that led up to the financial collapse, but none has been as successful as Margin Call. Why? Precisely because in the other two movies, we are given characters that the hoi polloi, the occupant 99%, are supposed to hate. The motivation with their main characters is personal greed. Margin Call is not so simplistic, and so, much more believable. The film is at its finest when developing the complex characters involved in this fictitious histo-drama. We get to know seven characters very well, a feat in itself for a movie of this length. And for each, our initial impressions are not our final impressions. The movie, in that sense, is shocking. A man we believe to be a terrible villain in the opening scenes, we will come to pity at the end. Because at the end, we see that the Jewish vision of labor has triumphed over the Roman view, which has since been adopted by the West, sadly, and to the detriment of culture and charity. This character brings us there, the place where button pushing is replaced by heart-breaking, back-breaking work. The entire cast is formidable and impressive except Demi Moore. She gives an encore performance to Disclosure, which is equally as bad. She doesn't deserve to be in another film.
Is this a movie about money? Only in form. In substance, it is a movie about our own motivations in life. By examining the motivation of others, their raison d'être, reason for being, it gives each of us a good opportunity to re-examine what motivates us. And I hope we will be able to move past money, obviously, but even past building bridges and digging holes. Our reason is far greater than our work of this sort. Only when our work is solely a work of love has our reason become exalted and pleasing. 8/10
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