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Message:	[quote author=lola board=movies thread=4912 post=106701 time=1301578489]They're putting in the occasional luxury type cinema here and there, with comfy leather couches, liquor, fancy food at the snack bar. There's one in the suburbs here that's for those over 21, with regular, not "adult XXX" movies. Probably not the Justin Bieber film, though, I'm guessing. I liked it in the olden days when they showed the movie continually, so if you strolled in late you could wait a few minutes at the end and catch what you missed.[/quote] Expand
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Topic Summary

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 29, 2011, 11:50pm

This list is from a site called Moviefone, & was compiled by Movieone staff.

Let's see who agrees, disagrees, throws the monitor across the room, etc.

Just because I'm a wonderful human bean, I've copied their choices into list form, highest to lowest, for easier reading. Real typing, folks, not c&p! [image]

http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/09/01/best-movies-of-2010/

1. Toy Story 3
2. The Social Network
3. Inception
4. Winter's Bone
5. Exit Through the Gift Shop
6. Black Swan
7. True Grit
8. The Kids Are All Right
9. The King's Speech
10. How to Train Your Dragon

11. Blue Valentine
12. 127 Hours
13. Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World
14. Waiting for Superman
15. Kick-Ass
16. The Secret in Their Eyes
17. Rabbit Hole
18. The Tillman Story
19. I Am Love
20. The Town

21. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
22. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
23. The Illusionist
24. Restrepo
25. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part I
26. A Prophet
27. The Ghost Writer
28. Animal Kingdom
29. The Fighter
30. Despicable Me

31. Four Lions
32. Tangled
33. The Other Guys
34. Another Year
35. Easy A
36. Enter the Void
37. Let Me In
38. Inside Job
39. Mother
40. Red

41. Catfish
42. Casino Jack & the United States of Money
43. Monsters
44. Shutter Island
45. I Love You, Phillip Morris
46. Tron
47. Buried
48. Made in Dagenham
49. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
50. Alice in Wonderland

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2011, 7:00am

I am not a fan of Inception.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2011, 7:13am

Someone -- Thill? -- recently reported on it. I think he said it was really good. Why didn't you like it?

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2011, 7:31am

Special effects wrapped in mumbo jumbo, wooden performances. It was a cross between Matrix 1 (a pretty good movie) and What Dreams May Come, one of the worst movies ever made.

Posted by bjd on Mar 30, 2011, 8:11am

Too US-based to comment. I haven't even heard of most of these movies, let alone seen most of them. Toy Story 3 is the best movie of 2010,?!

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2011, 8:49am

Frankly, I would leave it in at least the top 5 -- it was remarkable.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2011, 5:45pm

I watched it last night, in 2D. It really is brilliantly done. Even though, as an adult, I was marveling over the cleverness of it all, including the script, a part of me really believed in Buzz and Woody and all the rest.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2011, 6:01pm

It's the scene where Andy plays with his toys for one last time that makes 90% of the male spectators cry.

Posted by lola on Mar 30, 2011, 7:09pm

Thank you, bixa, for that.

Is someone who's only seen 8 of them and has another 5 in Netflix list qualified to comment? (she says before barging in and commenting anyway...)

US-centric for sure.
I never fit any of the Toy Stories into my schedule, and probably still won't. But. For sure Social Network and Winter's Bone above King's Speech. The Ghost Writer and Inside Job deserve to be a lot higher. I toughed Alice in Wonderland out until Johnny Depp showed up, gave him a minute to redeem it, then bailed out with curled lip.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2011, 8:08pm

Oh shoot ~~ I've only seen six of them. However, I figured the list, combined with the site's comments and whatever gets added here would be useful for compiling my own list of must-sees.

I agree with you about Alice to a point. Here's what I said about the movie when I'd just seen it, a year ago. (March 2010, here), at #219.

I just finished watching the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland online. [in 2D]

It was pretty entertaining, although I wasn't nearly as engaged as I would have liked. I've been reading the Alice books on and off ever since I was a child, so am a true aficionada. The parts I really liked were how Burton captured the whole ambivalence about growing up that's at the core of Through the Looking Glass, and also brought out the tacit feminism in the books.

Lots of it looks really good, too -- the White Rabbit is perfect, as is the Red Queen. Some other things jarred, though, such as proportions and placements seeming off, something you'd think wouldn't happen in film-making today. Also, the White Queen was just wrong -- nothing like the book. Some of the stuff was just there to be slapsticky or whiz-bang, such as the depiction of the March Hare, who was cartoony and jarring.

There were things about the movie that were too repetitive and too reminiscent of other movies. For instance, why were there so many chase scenes with the playing card soldiers of the Red Queen, when so many other wonderful things could have fit into the time available? And speaking of time, that was one of my major objections -- the whole timing of the movie is fitful and feels a beat off. Hard to explain, but I'm sure you all have experienced that kind of thing in a movie.

Helena Bonham Carter does great things with the Red Queen, actually turning it into a bit of a character study. Johnny Depp makes a super Mad Hatter except for the stupid, bad makeup. Really, it's downright distracting and out of place. I thought Mia Wasikowska as Alice was perfect -- a brilliant choice. Her costumes are SO much fun, too.

================================================================
Other comments about Alice, also from a year ago ~~

Auntie Annie:
We went to the cinema this afternoon, to watch Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was a nice enough two hours, but I wasn't totally blown over. Some bits were great and some not so much.

Kerouac:
Well, I found Alice in Wonderland completely boring, definitely Tim Burton at his worst. And retrofitting a film that was shot in 2D to make it 3D just does not work. I feel that I completely wasted 2 hours.

===============================================================

While looking for Alice reviews, I found Kerouac's comments about "I Love You Phillip Morris" here, at #219.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 30, 2011, 8:15pm

I have seen 23 of those movies, all on the big screen.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2011, 10:55pm

Don't start a fire buffing your fingernails on your shirt there, big-city boy.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2011, 5:34am

Did you think I was wasting all of my time on the internet? 8-)

Actually, I realized that I have seen 2 or 3 more -- it's not easy to recognize all of the English titles.

8 of them have not been released in France yet, and some of them probably never will. (Joan Rivers? ? ?)

Posted by onlymark on Mar 31, 2011, 5:53am

I've seen three. All on planes.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2011, 7:36am

Does that mean you don't seek out movies usually, Mark?

Kerouac, if you wanted to, you could copy the list & rate the ones you've seen by putting asterisks next to the titles.

Posted by onlymark on Mar 31, 2011, 8:03am

I don't have the opportunity. I can't go to an afternoon cinema as I wouldn't be back before the kids came home from school. I can't go to an evening one as I don't want to leave the kids alone. The only time I might is if they are round at a friends house, but then I can't be bothered as it's a bit of a trek to the cinema anyway and I'd rather catch up on stuff or go for a nice quite meal by myself.

There are few films in recent years I'd definitely make an effort to go and see. It's been like that since Harold Lloyd died.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2011, 8:22am

Oh yeah, I always forget that you still call them "the talkies".

Mark, is renting movies an option where you are?

Posted by onlymark on Mar 31, 2011, 8:46am

You mean like Blockbuster? With VHS tapes?!

Anyway, no it isn't. What I have done is used file sharing to get it if there is one I particularly wanted to see. I do look from time to time at the 'Top 50' type lists for genres or years and see if any take my fancy but a cinematic experience hasn't been the same since they stopped showing 'B' movies and having an intermission halfway through to buy ice cream.

Posted by lola on Mar 31, 2011, 1:34pm

They're putting in the occasional luxury type cinema here and there, with comfy leather couches, liquor, fancy food at the snack bar. There's one in the suburbs here that's for those over 21, with regular, not "adult XXX" movies. Probably not the Justin Bieber film, though, I'm guessing.

I liked it in the olden days when they showed the movie continually, so if you strolled in late you could wait a few minutes at the end and catch what you missed.

Posted by lola on Mar 31, 2011, 6:40pm

It's great you get to the movies like that, K.

I don't know what criteria the pros use for Best Films, but I'm sure it's better than mine which is that I like it for some reason. I tried to watch Green Zone on DVD, for instance, but can't make myself relive the whole DMD debacle, especially if I also have to worry about whether Matt Damon will be killed.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2011, 7:03pm

Okay, I will try to rate the movies that I saw, but I will also try to use lenient criteria, because I don't like dismiss the pleasure of other people.

1. Toy Story 3 ***
2. The Social Network ***
3. Inception *
4. Winter's Bone ***
5. Exit Through the Gift Shop **
6. Black Swan *
9. The King's Speech **
12. 127 Hours **
15. Kick-Ass **
16. The Secret in Their Eyes **
21. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo **
25. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part I **
26. A Prophet ***
27. The Ghost Writer ***
29. The Fighter **
31. Four Lions **
33. The Other Guys **
34. Another Year **
36. Enter the Void ***
43. Monsters **
44. Shutter Island *
45. I Love You, Phillip Morris x
46. Tron x
47. Buried **
49. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse **
50. Alice in Wonderland x

Okay, that makes 26. Made in Dagenham is still showing and I plan to see it.

Off the top of my head, I would place the magnificent Korean film Poetry near the top of my own list.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2011, 7:39pm

Lola, are the couches to sit upon while watching the movie, or are they only in the lobby? Dunno how I feel about the whole concep.

Kerouac ~~ you're a prince! I see that nothing has more than three stars. Is that your top award, or all that those movies merit? Would Poetry get four or five, for instance?

Hmm. I note you finally saw Black Swan & it only got one star.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2011, 7:57pm

I decided that 3 stars was a sufficient top rating for this sort of list. Once you go above that, it is too subjective. I do try to be objective in terms of the quality of the technical and artistic aspects. All feelings beyond that are increasingly personal and apply only to me.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2011, 8:00pm

Of course, looking at my own list, I am already revising it -- for example, The Ghost Writer is ** and not ***.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2011, 8:18pm

Well, if you weren't meant to revise, there wouldn't be a Modify feature.

I find what you did extremely helpful. As you say, it's all subjective, but having read various of your reviews of movies, I feel that I can safely bypass a movie that you think deserves no stars, or perhaps check out one I might have foregone otherwise, because you give it a high rating.

Posted by kerouac2 on Mar 31, 2011, 8:40pm

I nearly walked out of Buried after just 10 minutes. I can feel quite claustrophobic, so a movie that takes place 100% of the time in a buried coffin is just about more than I can bear. The fact that I was able to sit through it until the end makes it that much more impressive.

Posted by bixaorellana on Mar 31, 2011, 9:10pm

Gawd -- no no no no no!

I was gasping for breath just reading that post.

Posted by lola on Apr 1, 2011, 2:00am

Bixa, you can choose to sit on the couches or regular theater seats. Also, this place has an old fashioned balcony. It's in the old Moolah Temple, on a block that had been pretty shabby 20 yrs ago.

I think my movie tastes might be roughly similar to yours, Kerouac, judging from how you rated those I've seen. So I'll look for Poetry.

Posted by cheerypeabrain on Apr 5, 2011, 2:02pm

I have only seen a couple of the films in the list! I didn't think much to Toy Story 3, bought it as a DVD for my OH and he quite liked it.

Posted by thill25 on Apr 18, 2011, 8:17pm

1. Toy Story 3 ***
2. The Social Network ***
3. Inception **
4. Winter's Bone **
6. Black Swan ** (only because of Portman's performance...the movie was just so-so)
7. True Grit ***
8. The Kids Are All Right **
9. The King's Speech ***
10. How to Train Your Dragon ***
12. 127 Hours ***
15. Kick-Ass **
20. The Town***
24. Restrepo ***
29. The Fighter **
30. Despicable Me**
33. The Other Guys *
37. Let Me In **
44. Shutter Island **

Using k2's scale of three stars...


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