Bullet ReviewFollow

Watch Manhunt,

It'd be the best Lecter movie if were just a *little* less obviously a Micheal Mann movie.

I'm now convinced that you two have incredibly bizarre tastes in film. Is this one of those pretentious artsy kind of things where you declare a pile of shit to be art because you think it makes you part of some special "in" crowd or something?


Red Dragon is far and away superior to Manhunter. I liked Manhunter when it came out. I liked the story and the characters. However, it never held any repeat interest for me. I saw it once, knew the story and never had much interest to see it again. If I caught it on cable, I'd watch a couple minutes of it, think "Yeah. I've seen this, don't need to see it again" and change the channel.

I own Red Dragon on DVD (but don't own Silence of the Lambs or any of the others in that set) and watch it from time to time exactly because I think that Norton captured the essence of the main character so perfectly. And the fact that the cinematography doesn't look like it was filmed by a student with a super8 camera kinda helps matters too...

/shrug

It's a different take on the character. Peterson's take was more emotional. He played Graham as a broken person wanting nothing more than to excise his own inner demons. Norton's take was more cerebral, focusing on the how and why and desperately attempting to avoid dealing with ability to see into the criminal mind. Both had to deal with the same issues, and both actors played the parts well with a lot of overlap.

Having seen both films and read the book, I simply believe that Norton's performance is closer to the character as written. Peterson overplays the broken aspect of his character IMO, and that overshadows the rest of his performance. Norton's approach is more balanced. I suppose if you really like the focus on him being a broken hero, using what makes him insane to hunt those who are insane, then I can see you preferring Manhunter to Red Dragon. But while that aspect was present in the book, it wasn't nearly as strongly so as Peterson's performance suggested.


To be fair though. It has been a long time since I've seen Manhunter in its entirety. It's just that when I saw Red Dragon it just blew me away with how much it "fit" the book, whereas I never got that sense when reading the book towards Manhunter (which I saw before reading it). Could be because of the ordering of things. Who knows?

I'm telling myself that I'm going to finish this movie but it's a struggle. The weird thing is that it's not terrible -- I've seen worse movies -- but man, it's just draining my soul or something. Owen Wilson even got a few chuckles out of me but I think he's a psychic vampire who attacks via DVD. I'll either report back or be left an empty husk.

Not listed but I saw Burn After Reading last night. Not the bestest Cohen movie ever but fun. It doesn't require you to pay attention to minutiae to follow the plot but you'll have to at least stay awake. All the principle actors put forth a good to great job with Pitt probably engaging me the most just be being a complete dumbass. Tilda Swinton felt a little flat but I suppose she was supposed to. Malkovich was good but Malkovich is always good. On the other hand, he's also always like watching John Malkovich.

JK Simmons only has a few scenes as a CIA director but he absolutely steals them.

Flea thought it was worth the watch although she described it later as "a long joke with a good payoff but you're still not sure the payoff was worth the length". I'm a little less critical and felt it was certainly worth seeing once. I'm not sure how much it'd hold to repeat viewings; it doesn't have a Lewbowski-esque catalog of repeatable clever phrases or a bunch of hidden things to catch but see it the once and decide for yourself.

Edited, Jan 5th 2009 12:42pm by Jophiel

I came to practically the same conclusion after watching Burn After Reading. Brad Pitt's character was definitely the funniest and most sympathetic. The ending scene felt like the punchline to the entire movie.

Saw a few films on the plane to Argentina, and on the buses that took us from side of the country to another, so here's a few quick reviews of movies I caught:

- Vicky Christina Barcelona: Woody Allen's latest movie. Now, being French, I'm a huge fan of Woody Allen. I love his humour, his movies, I love the guy. And, being a guy, I'm a huge fan of Scralett Johanson. I love her lips, her boobs, I love the girl. I also really like Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, though for slightly different reasons. Keeping all this in mind, this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. The acting was shockingly awful, the dialogues were laughable, the voice-over will probably be considered a crime against humanity in years to come, and the story seemed like it was written by an angsty 16 year old emo girl. On the bright side, if you buy this DVD to someone for Christmas, you're sure to ruin an hour and a half of their life, so there's always that.



- How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: Based on a true story by some **** called Toby Young, this is a pretty funny movie. Nothing amazing, but I love Simon Pegg, and I think he is quickly taking over Ricky Gervais's mantle as the annoying-but-funny-loser. It's the usual "person-in-a-strange-environment" comedy theme, this time with a twaty English guy stuck in the American world of PR and entertainment. It works well in this film, and it's really quite enjoyable. Nothing amazing, but a funny English comedy.


- Ghost Town: Quite sh*t, I was expecting much better. Don't bother really, the film above is 100 times funnier.


- 8 Below: An inspiring movie about 8 Husky dogs that get abandonned in Antartica for 150 days by the local scientific team. It's a Disney movie aimed at 8 year olds, but I was almost in tears. I do have an unhealthly love for dogs, especially Huskies, so maybe it's just me, but man, that scene where Max gives Maya the Albatros he hunted, and then she doesn't want to it cos she's got a broken leg, but he still places it front of her because she's the leader of the pack, that was really touching. And the scene where they fight off the Sea Leopard was quite scary too. It's all based on a true story as well, though I have my doubts as to the veracity of some of the scenes where the dogs are alone in Antartica. Mostly because of the lack of human-speaking eye-witnesses. Still, top notch movie for 8 year-olds, or for people that really like dogs and are stuck on a 21 hour bus journey to Patagonia.


Edited, Jan 12th 2009 11:12am by RedPhoenixxx

I saw Slumdog Millionaire during the weekend, and it was pretty kick-***.

I'm a big fan of Danny Boyle anyway, Trainspotting being one of my all-time favourite films, and he's done really well on that one. It's half-Bollywood half-Hollywood, wih a sprinkling of English directing, and it works really well. The actors are great, the dialogues funny, the sceneries brilliant: you really feel like you're in India, as opposed to India-inside-a-Hollywood-studio. The film is funny, sad, happy, discomforting, conflictual, messy, a bit like India itself. I'd heartily reccomend it. It won't change your life, but its 2 hours of pretty great entertainment.

The pedophile movie with the guy from Capote? I saw it ages ago, and I still get slight nausea just thinking about it.

That's the one. I mean, it had some good dark humor and it kept me interested but, man, it was like 2 hours of feeling uncomfortable. It ranks among the better movies that I'll never, ever, ever watch again.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is that movie for me.

It's so, so, so, so, sad. Probably made 10 times worse because I was breaking up from a 7 year relationship at the time I saw it in the cinema. The cinematography, martial arts action and Asian poignancy of it was extraordinary. But it traumatised me to the pit of my soul. I've never cried so much in a cinema before or since.

Edited, Jan 19th 2009 9:14am by Aripyanfar

Very bad complete spoilers:

Oh no!!! I've forgotten how to hide text!

Spoiler text goes here.

Edited, Jan 19th 2009 8:43am by Jophiel

Jophiel, you aren't helping! How do I create the box that the mouse rolls back?