Seen any good movies? Or bad ones?

[3Caballeros]

HELP - DH and I have the rare opportunity to go see a movie at the theater tonight but very little looks appealing to me.
Has anyone seen The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ? It looks pretty good. Love Judy Dench! Unfortunately, the only place showing this flick is a run-down, antiquated theater far from home. Is it worth the drive ?

[claytonia]

We saw Spider-Man last week, and I really liked it. We also saw Brave this week, I agree with most other reviews, good but but not great like some Pixar classics. I just purchased advanced tickets for The Dark Knight Rises for this friday at 3:30. I can't explain how excited I am for this movie. I admit, I'm a Batman geek, but the last two Nolan versions of Batman were so good, and I read that this one tops those. I've gotta see it to believe it. I'll let you guys know after I see it. I've just got to plan my bathroom breaks before hand exactly right, since it's 2 hours and 45 minutes long. I can't get up in the middle of the movie, so hopefully I hit it just right.

Dang, I'm glad you mentioned how long it is...I might have to save the large Diet Coke for after the movie! I'm stoked about it too...I really wasn't sure how Tom Hardy was going to be Bane, but it looks like they got him to be appropriately terrifying.

[Brandie]

It won't help for an opening night run of Batman, but it could come in handy if you're seeing it a few days later . . .

www.RunPee.com

[pfalcioni]

Or these http://www.amazon.com/Depend-Underwe...ywords=depends

[AliceNWonderland]

People Like Us - Wonderful, touching movie.
Crazy, Stupid, Love - Funny with a little bit of raunch.

[claytonia]

I went to see Brave last night with my boyfriend and another friend. I actually enjoyed it thoroughly...I even found myself getting a little choked up at one point. I think it helped that I had read several "meh" reviews and therefore had lower expectations than I usually have for Pixar movies. It was visually stunning, of course, being Pixar. Merida's hair was especially amazing. The humor was right up the boyfriend's alley; he laughed hysterically every time the triplets did anything.

I was really glad that we got there in time for the trailers...in spite of the fact that I've watched it on the internet at least twelve times, I squeed so loudly after the Hobbit trailer that the little girl in the Merida dress in front of me turned around and looked at me with a great deal of concern. Also, I think Wreck-It Ralph looks great.

[claytonia]

We made it out to see The Dark Knight Rises last night after spending most of the day watching the first two. I really enjoyed it and plan to go see it again in IMAX. Bane was appropriately menacing, even though his voice occasionally reminded me of Celebrity Jeopardy Sean Connery with a side of Vader. ("I'M GOTHAM'S RECKONING, TREBEK...AND YOUR MOTHER'S.") I enjoyed Anne Hathaway as well...she looks even awesomer on the Bat Bike than Batman does. She also provided some spectacularly graceful martial-artsy fighting scenes, which was a nice contrast to Bane and Batman basically beating the @#%! outta each other.

[jeepster93]

I'd like to throw a vote in for Safety Not Guaranteed.​ It was a really, really good story!

[Jay]

Just catching up on a few...Batman and The Watch. Batman was very good (IMAX version) although I should have watched part two again as I was a bit cloudy on some of the references. The Watch was not as bad as it's Rotten Tomato score would indicate, but it was very uneven, poorly paced, and lacking in alien action (well, maybe it was as bad as it's score!). The week should be Total Recall and the local theater is having a Three Stooges marathon.

[Mr Baloo]

Batman was pretty dang good...... I would brush up on this history a bit though, a few key references to part 1 and part 2.

[Jay]

Just following up on my viewing from the last week. Total Recall was decent, with incredible visuals. I have seen the original many times so it was a bit difficult to get it out of my head. I felt this one didn't build proper tension during key scenes, jumping straight into action instead, and I think I may have missed something as there was no explanation for the mutants. The visuals sort of continued a look from Minority Report, with a similar color scheme and vehicles.
The Three Stooges festival was great, or at least started out that way. It is a difficult situation to find the fun in a Shemp after 3 excellent (and one not so great) Curly's. It is also difficult to laugh for two hours straight. Since this is a yearly festival (for the past 6 or so years), they don't repeat from year to year which means sooner or later, the lesser episodes will be shown. This year started with Punch Drunks, which just could not be topped. It was also the first year for digital versions, which was great because the existing 35mm copies are pretty beat at this point.
I also managed to see The Campaign. I thought it was pretty funny, about typical for a Will Farrell film, with a crazy family on par with the one from Talladega Nights. Keeping with the Farrell theme, I watched Casa de mi Padre on video last week (never played in a local theater) which was also good (and strange).

[magicalmoments]

I saw Bourne Legacy last Friday. I love the action but the story is very vague and somewhat (or a lot, I guess) reminiscent of the first Bourne films. I like Jeremy Renner so I wish they had fleshed out the story better. I wonder if they'll continue the series with him, if they do they HAVE to change up the story.

[josh]

Saw "The Raid: Redemption" the other night. Extremely violent, but good. Maybe one fist fight too many as the hand to hand combat gets tiresome.

Saw The Hunger Games last night. Long, but enjoyed it too. Looking forward to the sequels.

[Mister Brandon]

Moonrise Kingdom was wonderful. Wes Anderson is my favorite.

Batman was great, though a small part of me will always like Tim Burton's versions the best.

Took the kiddos to see The Pirates! Band of Misfits at the dollar theater. Is their even such a thing as a bad pirate movie? We all loved it.

[Jay]

I saw the Expendables 2 last night. If you saw the first one, you know what to expect. I generally enjoyed it, my main complaint was that there was very little hand to hand combat - no sense having Chuck Norris in the film if all he does is shoot weapons. Also, Stallone is getting very tough to look at - not sure what is going on with his face (too much surgery?). The story served it's purpose and the cast was good enough. The film itself looked like it was blown up from 16mm - very grainy, dark, and flat contrast. I guess it fit the story, but gave it a 70s drive-in vibe.
Unrelated to the film itself, there was what seemed like 30 minutes of previews (about 10 films) beforehand (something I noticed the prior week with the Campaign). The pacing of the average preview can get very tiresome after a while and 30 minutes or so is just too much, for me at least.

[josh]

Saw "Big Miracle" with my mom. It was actually pretty good. Rated well.

Might watch "Safe" tonight.

[jillyb]

Saw The Hunger Games last night. Long, but enjoyed it too. Looking forward to the sequels.

I watched this Tuesday night and thought it was really good. I, too, am looking forward to the sequels.

Moonrise Kingdom was wonderful.

Loved this movie!

I took Hannah and Madison to see "The Odd Life of Timothy Green". Highly recommend it!

[George]

Might watch "Safe" tonight.

The Todd Haynes film? It's really deceptively creepy. I love that movie.

[Jay]

Premium Rush - a frenetic film that should have cruised through its 90 minute running time. Should of, but after an hour it became tedious. The dialogue was too expository in the beginning and the bad guy (who looked like a mini Jaws) was cartoony. The film's sense of time was not consistant with a bit of jumping forward and backward (illustrated by having the time shown on the screen). For some reason, the ending brought to mind Footloose or any similar 'us against the man' films. Nice stunt work and what I guess was a bunch of CGI cars. I bumped Bourne Legacy to see this, so I guess I will see that one next week.
Previews included Looper, a Bruce Willis time travel tale that seems ok and another film that appears to be a somewhat disguised They Live.

[AmeliaPond]

I watched a really crappy movie today called "New Year's Eve." I wasn't expecting to like it....but it was even worse than I thought it would be.

[George]

I watched a really crappy movie today called "New Year's Eve." I wasn't expecting to like it....but it was even worse than I thought it would be.

This film flunked my Airplane Test, which says that a movie has to be good even when watched without sound, as I do with films all the time on airplanes. A film is first and foremost about visuals, and must largely tell its story that way. I watched this one on a recent flight, and it had sloppy cuts, stupid reaction shots, and careless shot composition which would look sub-par in a television show. I don't care what the subject of a film is; even sophomoric comedies and unrealistic action pics can achieve greatness. But a visually boring film turns me off and makes me wish I was doing almost anything else than wasting time on it.

[AmeliaPond]

I rarely like movies that feature a million characters and a million little "plots." (The movie Love, Actually is an exception though.) You just don't see enough of the characters to really care about them. I really couldn't care less how each of the little stories ended. It was boring.

[Jay]

Bourne Legacy...well for the first half or so, I had no idea what was going on, then during the second half I thought I was watching the film I saw last week - Premium Rush. This was just a bunch of retreads from Bond and whatever else films have people jumping over roofs in some poverty stricken foreign country. On the plus side, not much of the shaky camera work that made me sick during the first three Bourne films, however this one was loaded with those telephoto lens shots where you have no idea what you are looking at.
Best part of the night was John Goodman in just about every preview coming out in the next few months.

[Not That Josh]

I see a lot of movies because the owners of a theater nearby let me watch for free. I will only mention the last few I saw to keep this short.

Brave-liked it
Ice Age-I honestly don't know how many of these there have been, they all run together in my head. It's like one long movie.
Avengers-This is a little further back, but one of the funniest action movies.
The Campaign-Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakis. Funny but def earned R rating.
The Dark Knight Rises-In the best trilogy argument. Probably will watch again.
Expendables 2-exactly what you would expect
Lawless-good movie in my opinion. Tom Hardy's character was great and he did an amazing job with it. He would make these sounds and grunts that were like complete sentences.
Moonrise Kingdom-good but not my favorite Wes Anderson movie. that could be a new conversation

That's enough, for now

[Jay]

Branded - this certainly qualifies as one of the worst films I ever sat through, and I have sat through plenty of bad ones. The trailer was totally misleading, as well as the 15 sec TV spots I saw. I went in expecting a SciFi film (the one I referred to a few weeks ago as a variant of They Live). After 30 minutes or so I thought I was in the wrong movie - it was going nowhere near SciFi, more like a poorly disguised parody of the advertising industry. It made no sense, went on forever, and when it went into the effects section, they were on the level of a SyFy original movie. As a bonus, there was a moment during some of the subtitled parts where the word 'Their' was misspelled. (and this film even had a narrator - along the lines of Creeping Terror).
Next week I'm looking forward to The Master, as well as Resident Evil - maybe I can pull off seeing both.