Erased
Aaron Eckhart
C+

yogamble wrote:Erased
Aaron Eckhart
C+

Watch something good then.

Recommend me a good one streaming on netflix and I will. Don't bother with Avengers, I've already watched that gem 6 times. Ironman's entrance in Germany is epic. Gets me every time when he overrides the P.A.

If it's on there, Shaun of the Dead.

His Girl Friday-


An absolutely delightful romp with Grant at his most commanding and enjoyable. The fast talking and over-lapping dialogue feels like Sorkin only way more cute, and few films include as much raw entertainment value as this in a small hour and a half running time. It's on Netflix now, and is a must watch.


-Vader

Nice. Thanks for the suggestions!

9/10

Vader182 wrote:His Girl Friday-


An absolutely delightful romp with Grant at his most commanding and enjoyable. The fast talking and over-lapping dialogue feels like Sorkin only way more cute, and few films include as much raw entertainment value as this in a small hour and a half running time. It's on Netflix now, and is a must watch.


-Vader

The Ralph Bellamy line by Grant is the BEST AD-LIB IN HISTORY. No joke.

Vader182 wrote:
They're amazingly well crafted in almost every way a film can be. Even the 'poor' dialogue adds a charm, and the actors have such amazing chemistry they sell their performances in the most vital ways they had to be. The staging and execution of most sequences is masterful, and display a mastery of cinematic craft. I really wish Lucas got help with the scripts for the prequels and didn't focus so much on effects, since the shot by shot construction of the action and drama is pretty sensational.


-Vader

Haven't seen the other two in ages so i can only discuss a new hope here:
The actors certainly have great chemistry but for the most part I found the individual performances pretty hammy. I love Harrison Ford to death but he's never been a terribly gifted actor (a lot of only mumbling or only shouting going on). Alec Guinness was one of the few who didn't go completely over the top, but I found that balanced out the wackiness of the other performances pretty nicely.
I agree the prequel scripts needed help (to say the very least) but a new hope doesn't sit quite right with me either. Dialogue aside, the entire story is anchored on the idea that if they get the death star's plans back to the rebel base, they may be able to find flaw in it's design big enough to destroy it. This isn't bad in and of itself, but they explicitly state from the beginning that that is literally their plan. It doesn't take the most observant viewer to guess exactly what is gonna happen. Fundamentally the film does work, but it is by no means perfect. I'd get comfortable, then the film would make an amateur move. Luke staring at the two suns with williams' score blasting is simply amazing, followed up by dat lighting.
I love star wars (and would put it over LOTR if only talking about pure enjoyment), I just don't think it's as bulletproof a film as it's been made out to be.

It depends what you mean by bulletproof, I think. Those are films that ask you to take a leap of faith for something bigger, or greater than yourself. They're more of an experience than a story, made up of quite a few bottles zapped with and holding lightning. The hammy dialogue and performances gives the intended effect of a classic serialized adventure, so although they're flaws if you think of them in literary depth or whatever, sure. They're flawed. But if they're in a context of chasing an intended effect, I'm hard pressed to find almost anything in the first two Star Wars films that don't work. The camera placement, movement, and editing is that of a 'hungry' filmmaker with something to prove, one with a vast knowledge of movies. I mean, the Darth Vader and Obi-Wan confrontation is a shot for shot recreation of a scene from Hidden Fortress, and Kurosawa was a much acclaimed master by that point.

It's not really meant to bank on predicability or unpredictability of plot in the way you mean, but it relies on the humanity of the characters. Can Luke pull it off? Will Han come to help? Those are the big questions and the big stakes, not about plans or how to get them. That's just background. It's funny, the roles of character and the technical gibble gobble nonsense are flipped in the prequels, lol.

I'm just kidding. It's mostly just depressing.


-Vader