Then Capo, what's the point of debating? Why bother giving thumbs down reviews?

Better yet, whats the point of the FCM website?

The answer to both questions is to DISCUSS about movies.

Why is WEEKEND such a great movie? Why did PEARL HARBOR suck so hard? Is MIAMI VICE solid entertaining cop/crime genre fluff, or a simplistic bottom-of-the-barrell crime genre work of Michael Mann?

Is INFERNAL AFFAIRS or its sequel THE DEPARTED superior?

Better yet, with this argument Capo, why criticize President Bush or your boy Tony Blair?

Because DE NIRO couldn't believe it, banged his head on the brick wall and simply said I should check it out. But you came along with your sarcastic remark and rolley eyes (wasn't there a discuss on this board about how those eyes can get you into trouble?)

Fine, I apologize. Sheesh.

School for Scoundrels (2006) ** 1/2
(First Viewing)

Jon Heder plays an unlucky meter reader who enrolls in a confidence-building class so he can win the love of the girl of his dreams. The class turns out to be something quite different when it becomes clear to the young man that his professor (Thorton), has his sights set on the same girl.

Napoleon Dynamite meets Bad Santa and the outcome is a hilarious comedy. I've loved Billy Bob's work ever since he dressed up as the old fat man that comes every Christmas, whereas Jon Heder's last comedy, The Benchwarmers was a complete bust (nice to see him rebound). Jacinda Barrett (Heder's love interest in the film) and complete b*tch roommate Sarah Silverman work fabulously together and Sarah steals every scene she's in. Finally, Michael Clark Duncan continues to make me laugh and the biggest surprise of the film was Ben Stiller with his New York accent and messed up long hair.

Marie Antoinette ***
(First Viewing)

Based on Antonia Fraser's book about the ill-fated Archduchess of Austria and later Queen of France, 'Marie Antoinette' tells the story of the most misunderstood and abused woman in history, from her birth in Imperial Austria to her later life in France.

What I really found interesting about this film is Director Sofia Coppola used modern music, which I really liked. However, the acting and casting of a few was kind of bad/suspect. Jason Schwartzman and Rip Torn, most noteably and among others, gave ZERO effort in attempting to produce a French accent. Other than that Kirsten Dunst was tolerable and borderline enjoyable.

The lack of French accents are the point, no? Dunst certainly doesn't have one.

Does it suck? Or have you failed to find the good in it? You might just have to try a bit harder to see masterpieces in some films than you do in others.

I don't, that's the point; I feel unqualified to judge people I've never met.

By no means am I saying I live by this; but perhaps I should... I don't know.

Capo, does SCARFACE suck? You've said it before yourself that in each subsequent screening, you find it lacking more and more. So with your argument, are you failing to find any good within it?

Maybe we both are just chasing mice in our heads.

As for the Bush/Blair thing, your taxes pay Tony Boy Blair's salary. His boss is supposed to be the taxpayers.

Anyway Irish, glad you quite enjoyed MARIE ANTOINETTE. I think the "bad" acting is a misnomer. The French monarchy was full of people who were retarded in being human. To quote an old teacher of mine, if you lived Disneyworld your whole life, how can you deal with the real world?

In a way, this retardation leads to the monarchy to become a bunch of spoil brat children that never grow up.

But thats just my opinion.

COMMANDO (1985) - ***

Generic action-plot of American special forces badass (Ahhnuld) trying to save his daughter from mercenaries in under 11 hours doesn't make this movie.

What makes COMMANDO memorable for a generation is the outright cartoonish subreality of the movie. A man can fall from a plane and into a swamp pond without breaking legs. A car gets wrecked and flips over, but when flipped back, its repaired. One guy with enough ammo for the nation of Liberia can destroy a whole tiny island's army(though you have to admit, its an apt parallel to Grenada).

No, its two things that make the movie a camp 80's action-cheese classic. Its the humor of it. Take this scene where Ahhhnuld has THE WARRIORS' own maniac assassin Luthor(David Patrick Kelly) hanging over a cliff:

"Remember Sully when I said that I would kill you last?"
"Yeah Matrix, you did!"
"I LIED."

*Drops*

Maybe the Rae Dawn Chong casting makes it damn funny as well. Maybe its the casting of Kelly, 80's black bad mother fucker action man Bill Duke, Dan Hedaya as a Latin American dictator(the make-up is hilariously bad in itself). Hell, I almost forgot about the baddie of the movie, who basically is Freddy Mercury(heavy gay-moustache especially) pumped on steroids and adrenaline.

There is no coincidence that the finale fight of the baddie and Mercury-on-steroids is bordering upon softcore homoerotic pornography.

In a way, COMMANDO works because it does something that RAMBO 2 never could. COMMANDO knows its fucking idiotic, and relishes in it. RAMBO 2 really was trying to be seriously sincere as some sort of 80's anti-Vietnam statement in the midst of its own stupidity. COMMANDO is an all-out good excuse for Ahhhnuld to maim and kill people.

Guess which movie I prefer by a good war or two?

Babel ***
(First Viewing)

This is a complex tale of four interlocking stories. A poor Moroccan family acquires a rifle to protect their goats. An American couple's bus tour holiday is shattered when she is accidentally shot. That couple's children, at home in the USA with their nanny/housekeeper, accompany her to Mexico to attend her son's wedding. A Japanese father, whose wife has committed suicide some time ago, is unable to communicate with his teenage daughter. A tragic tale for all concerned.

I had been looking forward to this movie since I saw previews for it to hit theaters (but was never able to make a screening). It did run a little long at a runtime of 142 minutes but a great story with a great performance by Rinko Kikuchi (who plays the deaf-mute girl desperately in need of human contact). Even though he was only in one scene, I also LOVED Clifton Collins Jr.'s performance as the pr*ck boarder patrol officer.

Irish, what movie should win Best Picture? BABEL or DEPARTED?

You know I'm a Marty-a-holic so I'd go with Marty (he's been screwed in the past and this is his year). Based on movies alone, I still give it to The Departed. But Alejandro González Iñárritu is turning some heads and I'm glad because his last movie, 21 Grams, was great!

I asked Best Picture, not Best Director.

But yeah, this fellow Marty-holic...I'm happy that he's a fucking LOCK to win Best Director finally.

The 16 day coronation march to the Oscars continues...care to tag along?

Now what movie will win Best Picture?

For the first time in years upon years....its up in the air. You can make an argument for any of the Best Picture nominees(BABEL, DEPARTED, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, THE QUEEN) to win.

Why?

THE DEPARTED - It's the clear-cut box-office champion. With over $120+ million smackers in American theatres, it will be perhaps the only massly-wide-seen Best Picture contender of this year. Yet it can lose because of the fact that its a remake, and remakes have NEVER won Best Picture. Never.

BABEL - Its the social-message movie of the year, and the sort of material that the Oscars love. However, CRASH's surprise win last year for Best Picture might turn Oscar voters from supporting this horse (which is a pity, since BABEL wipes its ass with that mediocre after school-special CRASH).

THE QUEEN - Yeah, it can win. People count it out for being a "too small" of a movie to win it all, but so what? If BABEL and DEPARTED split votes, THE QUEEN could get crowned.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - The underdog Sundance champ movie that's earned a big profit, and seems to be the "indie" champ in the competition. Better yet, it could be the "spoiler" over QUEEN if DEPARTED and BABEL split ballots. The problem for LMS is that its got no Best Director nods, and guess what? That usually means no chance at victory for LMS...in any other year.

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - People were shocked that Eastwood got Best Picture and Director nods for IWO JIMA, but should they be? People admire his back-to-back shot WW2 movies(including FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) and LETTERS was well-better received than FLAGS.

The problem? Its grossed less than $10 million, and will continue to be very little-seen by Americans by the 25th, when the Oscars are announced.

Stay tuned!

I agree, Babel was a better movie than Crash but I remember Crash still being a good movie. I've only seen it once (when it first came out on DVD) and I'm been meaning to rewatch it soon.

IMO Babel is full of characters that I can empathize with and hence it gets me involved deeply with the film. On the other hand, notwithstanding the excellent editing, Departed is full of indifferent guys. Some years from now, I will be tempted to revisit Babel and probably forget Departed. But I have to say that I enjoyed Departed thoroughly and I have already watched it twice.
Little Miss Sunshine has a predictable story and is not worthy of Oscar.

Yeah, maybe. But they're cute so I allow them to. Mine wear big black sunglasses.

Scarface is a film I most certainly did not connect with, but into each of my viewings, which were both an incredibly long time ago, went outside influences urging me to like it, and so I was subconsciously resisting that... and I still think it's grossly overlong. I'd love to see it again, though, and soon.

As for Blair, I don't pay taxes because I'm not earning enough; I've been eligible to vote for over a year now, and never do. I'm not sure whether or not that's irresponsible, but I tend to live my life the same under any leader, so it makes little difference to me.

As for Oscar debates, I'm not even happy with the nominations; the only one I really don't mind is The Departed. I'll go for that, though I'm really not sure why.

I thought Babel was very good, but I had several problems with it. The non-linear narrative, for one, wasn't as essential to its meaning as in 21 Grams, it was more of a gimmick, less exciting, and in the end probably overlong. A few of the different narrative strands connected in a very wishy-washy way, and the Mexican boarder scene surprised me in how typical and ordinary it was. I had expected more of the director.

I seem to be in a heavy minority who didn't like The Queen. It was as if a popular made-for-TV drama was condensed down into a feature-length film and released in theatres due to the television success. The acting was very good, but I counted one shot in the entire thing which lifted it above banality.

The Departed is the best of the three nominations I've seen. I didn't really have any major problems with it at all; it didn't look very nice but it boasted an energy and punch which we've come to expect from Scorsese. He's never made a film that's dragged... even his long films hurtle by. The Departed seems the most consistent of the bunch, the most assured, the most solid, the most attractive. Scorsese's use of sound is fantastic. I'd like to see it again.

I've still to see Little Miss Sunshine and Letters.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles * 1/2
(First Viewing)

All that Neal Page wants to do is to get home for Thanksgiving. His flight has been cancelled due to bad weather, so he decides on other means of transport. As well as bad luck, Neal is blessed with the presence of Del Griffith, Shower Curtain Ring Salesman and all-around blabbermouth, who is never short of advice, conversation, bad jokes, or company.

A pretty notable cast including Steve Martin, John Candy (I miss him), Kevin Bacon, Edie McClurg an Ben Stein. This film had it's moments but nowhere near as hilarious as I had heard from a fellow employee.

I presume you mean parallel stories, rather than non-linear. I thought that each of the stories was linear by itself. My friends had problem with this and several other points. We went to the theater thinking that this is a story about an American couple in Iraq (it turned out to be Morocco!). We had no idea that there were 3 parallel stories. So all of us were waiting for the connection between the other two stories with the Moroccan one, which we thought was the main story. Half way through I realized it and watched the rest of the movie without that bias. Secondly they were looking for a strong connection between the 3 stories, which essentially was not the intention of the director. The connection, whatever little was just accidental, it is a trivial part in the big picture.

The Morocco Story - 2 arcs.
A peaceful family dragged into problems and death because of the inherently sly nature of the younger son. A tragedy.
A couple with marital problems discovering their love when faced with adversity and fear of death. A positive arc.

The Japan Story - A complex arc
It starts happily with a deaf-mute girl with her friends, then descends deeper and deeper into tragedy with her sexual frustration. But at the end of it all she regains the love of her father who till then had been a stranger to her practically.

The Mexico Story - Completely tragic arc.
What should have been a routine day ends up totally life altering for the kids and the nanny, who after 15 years finds she cannot enter US. The kids are totally scarred with the near death experience.

That is how life is, bizarre. Unexpected tragedies and reversal of fortunes. I liked how the director deals with this theme with comparisons and contrast. My favorite is the Japan story however. It is beautiful, tragic, but ultimately reassuring. Great effort thematically. Ofcourse the technical brilliance has been alluded to by others including yourself. I would also like to mention that the very wide-angle closeups in Morocco were good.

What the hell was all that about though, the standing naked on the balcony? I liked the shot when it pulled away from the balcony, but that was mostly due to the music, too. It seemed far less grounded than his other two features.

The narrative is non-linear, because it's jumping back and forth between events that happened over the course of several days. The parallel stories within that narrative might unfold in order, but the narrative is non-linear.

I think that naked shot was a metaphor to the father accepting and reaching out to his daughter as if she was a new born baby (naked and helpless). It is something he did not do because of his wife's presumably tragic death. That is my interpretation, by no means the definitive one.


OK, you are the technical man, I'll agree with your definition

Blue Velvet *
(First Viewing)

Returning home to visit his father who is in intensive care at the hospital, Jeffrey Beaumont stumbles upon a human ear he finds in a field. With local police detective Williams and the local police department unable to investigate, Jeffrey and Sandy, Detective Williams's daughter decide to do their own investigation. But what Jeffrey and Sandy's investigation leads them to discover that a dark underworld exists in their hometown. Jeffrey becomes suspicious of nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, who is involved with Frank Booth, a violent and evil man.

A great and disturbing performance by Dennis Hopper (sometimes I feel the man doesn't receive the credit he deserves). Also, a great cameo there by Dean Stockwell (otherwise known as Al from the Quantum Leap series). Other than the film felt excruciatingly slow and I was bored with it. I forgot this was from David Lynch who brought us Mulholland Dr.

Robin Hood (1973) *** 1/2
(Nth Viewing)

Retelling of the Robin Hood legend with animals for the characters. Robin Hood is an outlaw who starts to form a gang in Sherwood Forest to fight the injustices of the Sheriff of Nottingham, who levies unpayable taxes upon the people.

One of my favorite and one of Disney's best animated films IMO

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984) - ***** - Masterpiece

Man, the version shown on AMC is pathetically chopped up.

Seriously folks, never never EVER watch it on AMC. If you do, you lose points with me.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves **
(First Viewing)

After escaping from a Dungeon after being captured by the Turks during the crusades, Robin, son of Lord Locksley and a warrior Moor named Azeem return to England only to find Robin's father has been murdered by the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham and has taken over his Father's lands. Unable to be helped by Maid Marian Dubois, sister of Robin's friend Peter who died trying to help Robin and Azeem escape. Robin vows to avenge his father and flees to the Forest of Sherwood, home to a band of outlaws who have been banished from their villages by the Sheriff of Notingham. Combining the forces of the outlaws, Robin and his merry men set out on a crusade against the Sheriff of Nottingham and defeat the Sheriff of Nottingham and his henchmen who bids to take over the throne of England's rightful ruler King Richard and put a end to the corruption that has infested the English countryside.

A very noticable cast but the movie wasn't up to par. I was wondering while watching the film why it has seemed to "slip through the cracks of time" and now I know why. The movie was entertaining (if not overlong), with again, a very noticable cast. However, I felt the whole Sheriff of Nottingham/Alan Rickman's mother is a witch scenario should have been SCRAPED from the picture. On a positive side, this was an enjoyable part from Christian Slater before he life spiraled out of control. Also, Alan Rickman and Michael Wincott easily were the most enjoyable as the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne respectively. I'm becoming more of a Kevin Costner fan but I felt he didn't put forth 100% in this film. JFK he seemed to put forth the effort and even somewhat in The Untouchables but for me, in this picture, it was as if someone was forcing his hand the whole way through. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio did a great job as Maid Marian as did Michael McShane as Friar Tuck. Finally, it was great to see a cameo from Sir Sean Connery as King Richard, even if it was for only 2 lines of dialogue.

Irish, I totally agree with you on PRINCE OF THIEVES.

Then again, Rickman is fun in his comfortable Hollywood villain archetype work but nothing special.

In Like Flint * 1/2
(First Viewing)

Flint is again called out of retirement when his old boss finds that he seems to have missed 3 minutes while golfing with the president. Flint finds that the president has been replaced by an actor. Flint finds that a group of women have banded together to take over the world through subliminal brainwashing in beauty salons they own.

In all honesty, the only reason I bothered with this movie, is because I remember Austin Powers saying "it was his favorite movie" (plus that quote was on the DVD case). The movie itself was very disappointing. I never really felt a connection or cared about our secret agent Derek Flint (which is rather sad and CANNOT happen in a spy movie). I think this was basically just Fox's attempt to try to capitalize on the phenomenon the James Bond series begin in 1962 with Dr. No. Plus, I felt Flint was more of a scientist than a secret agent (he was just so knowledgeable and he just seemed more comfortable in the laboratory than in the field). Not to say that secret agent's can't be knowledgeable, but he seemed to be "too smart" for the profession if you know what I mean (basically, he liked his work more than the ladies, even though on screen they tried to persuade you otherwise).

Try OUR MAN FLYNT, which actually is a decent spoof/serious knock-off of the Bond craze of the 1960s.

Yeah I'm gonna try to watch it Thursday (gotta grab it from work)

Hannibal Rising ***
(First Viewing)

This is the story of the monster Hannibal Lecter's formative years. These experiences as a child and young adult led to his remarkable contribution to the fields of medicine, music, painting and forensics. We begin in World War II at the medieval castle in Lithuania built by Dr. Lecter's forebear, Hannibal the Grim. The child Hannibal survives the horrors of the Eastern Front and escapes the grim Soviet aftermath to find refuge in France with the widow of his uncle, mysterious and beautiful Japanese descended from Lady Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Tale of Genji. Her kind and wise attentions help him understand his unbearable recollections of the war. Remembering, he finds the means to visit the outlaw predators that changed him forever as they battened on helpless during the collapse of the Eastern Front. Hannibal helps these war criminals toward self-knowledge even as we see his own nature become clear to him.

Remember, this is a prequel to Red Dragon so there's not a lot of blood & guts. It's the transformation of Hannibal Lecter. Figuring out what makes him tick and trying to understand how he came to be the way he turned out. Gaspard Ulliel really impressed me at the tender age of 22 to play the teenage Hannibal Lecter. During the first part of the film, he didn't say much but when he finally did, I think it made him even more of a monster. Visually vicious. Secondly, I didn't realize there was going to be so much of a Japanese undertone to the film (which I really enjoyed since I've really gotten into the Japanese cinema and culture since the Kill Bill movies came out a couple of years ago). Gong Li is a great actress and put together another great performance as Hannibal's Aunt, Lady Murasaki Shikibu. Finally, the entire European cast was just fantastic, particularly Rhys Ifans who was the main villain in this tribe of cannibals.

Cleopatra (1963) ***
(First Viewing)

The film is the historical and poetical drama of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt who wants to stabilize her power by using the tensions in the Roman Empire. Due to her beauty Julius Caesar as well as Marc Antony, his oponent, fall in love with her but Cleopatra deceides for the wrong side and loses in the end all; and Egypt is being integrated into the Roman Empire.

I really miss BIG Hollywood Roman Epic's like this and others. I miss the beauty sets, thousands of extra's/costumes, with at least a 240 minute runtime. Rex Harrison (Julius Caesar), Elizabeth Taylor (Cleopatra) and Richard Burton (Marc Anthony) were all great in their respectfull roles. Does anyone know of any other great Hollywood Roman Epic's other than Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments and Cleopatra that I should check out?

spactacus is a classic have you seen this one.