Amour 7.5/10 Massive procrastination before the Oscars. I just watched it a couple of hours ago. This is a Michael Haneke movie, so do not bring a date to this one. It's not the type that is easy to watch and is not a crowd pleaser. It is extremely well acted and directed, however. It's very focused and tackles a difficult topic. It's a tragic situation, but on the other hand it's hard to fault any of the key characters regarding how they react to it. I've read this is Haneke's "most accessible" and mainstream friendly movie, but I'm not sure about that, especially if you've gone through an experience with this subject matter (I have). I personally liked The White Ribbon from a few years ago better, but I thought Amour is worth seeing if you can handle movies with a rather bleak tone. If not, I'll save you the trouble and verify that the key actors were superb. That's not terribly surprising, however. Saying Isabelle Huppert can act is about as shocking as saying a rock is hard or the sky is blue. This is her 14th acting nomination for a César in France. Emmanuelle Riva was also terrific, and she could win the Oscar, too.
Battleship This was a dull film indeed. For a stupid action film, it was poor - a plot that was way too stupid combined with boring action sequences made for a long couple of hours. Also, it did a rubbish job with the characters - I really didn't care about any of them. One to avoid.
Argo won the Oscar for best picture, seriously? It was alright, but it wasn't that good. You know it's a slow year for movies when a Ben Douchefleck movie wins and Anne Hathaway gets an Oscar for screeching her way through Les Mis.
@monsly I know what you mean. I saw the first 20 minutes of that the other night and gave up. I went in knowing it would be crap but it exceeded my expectations. The main character for instance, what a twat. Never doing what he's told, in fact always doing the opposite, and somehow he got into the navy. I found the idea of him winning the smoking hot navy captain's (or whatever rank she was) affections by breaking into a convenience store, trashing the place, and being tazed repeatedly in front of her to be especially eye roll inducing. And Rihanna was in it. I began to wonder why people like Rihanna, Beyonce, and Justin Timberlake try their hand at acting but then I remember that lip synching is acting I knew it was bad, but wasn't prepared for just how loathe some it would be, monkey should watch it, he likes to watch crap films quite regularly.
Les Miserables won 3 Oscars? This is just ridiculous. I'm happy Day-Lewis and Waltz won. I'm quite surprised Tarantino won. I didn't expect that from the Academy. He's won twice for writing but actually only twice nominated for directing with no wins.
Were you guys overseas under the impression that Battleship was supposed to be a good movie or something? Over here in the US, everybody was pretty much under the impression that it was a garbage film before it even came out.
Battleship was also a huge box office bomb that only made $65M on a $209M budget. Taylor Kitsch is box office poison. @AKS I agree with you on Waltz and DDL. I was also happy to see Jennifer Lawrence win. She seems to be a great up and coming actress with a bright future ahead of her. I know she's known more for Hunger Games, but watch Winter's Bone or Silver Linings Playbook and you'll see that she's actually an incredibly good actress.
I saw Winter's Bone not long after it came out. I have been impressed with Lawrence (although less so than Elizabeth Olsen, my pick for Best Actress last year, another young actress with loads of talent). The Hunger Games doesn't negatively influence my opinion of her. I didn't think The Hunger Games was a bad movie, and I can certainly understand why she took that part. Lawrence had stiff competition for that award from Emmanuelle Riva. I plan to watch Silver Linings Playbook very soon. I considered doing a double header yesterday and watch Silver Linings right after Amour, as both were showing at the same theater, but I was too tired two watch both back-to-back.
I watched a short interview recently with Jimmy Carter and he was asked how accurate to real life Argo was, and he said that the main difference was that the film placed most of the emphasis on U.S. operatives, while in real life it was actually Canadian operatives who were central to the success of the plan. The interviewer seemed annoyed that he kept heaping praise on Canada.
Battleship has been on HBO this month. I have successfully completed the whole movie over several different viewings. It is about as bad as you would expect from the original commercials. Worthy of watching while doing laundry.
This thread is a good example of how crazy Europeans allowed that movie to recoup most of it's costs. It actually made over $300M world wide. Definitely a net loss for the studio but they averted a John Carter-esq disaster. I'd be surprised if that actor gets much work again, I think he's doomed to TV.