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Apollo 13 meets Grumpy Old Men. Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys may not be a cinematic masterpiece (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby are far more impressive), but it's a pleasant little story nonetheless. If you like astronaut movies, you'll probably have some fun with it.
Co-starring Marcia Straight Hard-On.
Apollo 13 meets Grumpy Old Men. Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys may not be a cinematic masterpiece (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby are far more impressive), but it's a pleasant little story nonetheless. If you like astronaut movies, you'll probably have some fun with it.
Co-starring Marcia Straight Hard-On.
For some reason Space Cowboys is one of few space movies that actually manage to make me uncomfortable by conveying a sense of isolation and height. I sort of get vertigo from it. Not sure why, maybe the satellite they go up to is situated higher than them so you always get it contrasted by just a black void, rather than accompanied by the safety of seeing the earth at the same time. I sort of get the same feeling you get when you climb a climbing wall in a small-ish gymnasium. It's fine just climbing up, but when you reach the top and you can almost touch the ceiling this urgent feeling of vertigo sets in.
Not even Gravity did that for me, that was just more neutral thrills. Never really reached that "get me down from here, now!" state of mind.
I don't know what score to give this movie. It deserves a solid 8.5/10 for the first two hours, or maybe even a 9. But the last 20 minutes are just bizarre, and the ending feels like some kind of joke. First, there's a time jump, after which we learn that all of the character stuff the movie just spent the last two hours building up has been completely undone, and we're never told why. This is followed by an improbable revenge fantasy that makes no sense. All of the rest of it was just so good, though. I think I'm just gonna pretend that ending never happened and give it a 9.
I don't know what score to give this movie. It deserves a solid 8.5/10 for the first two hours, or maybe even a 9. But the last 20 minutes are just bizarre, and the ending feels like some kind of joke. First, there's a time jump, after which we learn that all of the character stuff the movie just spent the last two hours building up has been completely undone, and we're never told why. This is followed by an improbable revenge fantasy that makes no sense. All of the rest of it was just so good, though. I think I'm just gonna pretend that ending never happened and give it a 9.
I love PT Andersons films because all his scenes seem written purely to give the characters a situation in which to react and reveal nuances of themselves, not necessarily to fit into a specific narrative. Seeing as Daniel and Eli subscribe to almost completely different worldviews, bringing them together in the way the movie does say something very strong about Daniels feelings of Eli and his despise of people in general and him specifically.
It never bothered me, in fact I love the dialogue and performances, but I rarely tend to think in terms of what is improbable for the plot, particularly not in purely character-driven movies. If something comes out of left field, as long as it is in itself well-staged, well-directed and true to the character, I'd even applaud it for being surprising.
I also almost-love The Master, and the plot has even less coherence in that, it basically only created scenarios for characters to clash in various ways to expose deeper layers.
In this last week, I've been watching a few films! Some great, some absolutely awful.
The great? Children Of Men. Found it to be a really engaging sci-fi movie that was neatly written and the direction on it was incredible. Some of those oners, even if they were stitched together were amazing to watch.
The absolute awful? Well... As an animation buff, I have the dubious honor of watching Food Fight. Started development in 2001, pegged as a "Toy Story Killer", cost $45 million to produce (though its rumoured to be closer to $65 million!) and released last year and made roughly $70k in the US Box Office. It is honestly a terrifying train-wreck that you can't help but watch.
So what beauty does it contain? To name a few...
Characters who's eyes/irises don't move, just endlessly forward.
Broken mo cap animations
Texture quality that you could find on a PS1
Some dialogue lines that are LITERALLY phoned in
An all-star cast including Charlie Sheen, Christopher Lloyd, Hilary Duff and Wayne Brady
Children of Men is great, and a good episode of the podcast as well.
And it sounds like Food Fight might make for an even better episode.
+1
RUSH - Formula 1 racing makes NASCAR look like a Hilary Duff film. Love this movie, and it was just as good the second time around. Don't look for any real character depth, however.
Austenland - Don't judge me. I'd watch Keri Russell carve wooden eating utensils, so sitting through this wasn't nearly tough enough. The movie was rather standard-fare rom-com... only it wasn't very funny.
Children of Men is great, and a good episode of the podcast as well.
And it sounds like Food Fight might make for an even better episode.
It certainly could! Apparently whilst in development, the movie was stolen and had to be cobbled together with what's left of the budget. But bare in mind, this was around the time of Monsters Inc! Here's what the trailers showed it as, which manages to hide it's level of awfulness by picking the best animated parts of the movie... Which says something, really.
Teague wrote:Children of Men is great, and a good episode of the podcast as well.
And it sounds like Food Fight might make for an even better episode.
It certainly could! Apparently whilst in development, the movie was stolen and had to be cobbled together with what's left of the budget. But bare in mind, this was around the time of Monsters Inc! Here's what the trailers showed it as, which manages to hide it's level of awfulness by picking the best animated parts of the movie... Which says something, really.
Oh my God. That was...
No words, I got no words for that. I feel robbed just watching the trailer.
My skin is literally crawling.
It desires escape.
Holy crap.
It was a rough ride to sit through. I could only do it because I was watching it with friends and we were both discussing our shock at it. If you guys did do an episode on Foodfight! then holy crap, I'd be incredibly impressed.
It was particularly hard for me as I'm on a games design course so I've dabbled in 3D animation. Even with my passing knowledge of animation principles, I knew I could do better!
That reminded me of a game showing in Kentia Hall during E3.
Teague wrote:Children of Men is great, and a good episode of the podcast as well.
And it sounds like Food Fight might make for an even better episode.
It certainly could! Apparently whilst in development, the movie was stolen and had to be cobbled together with what's left of the budget.
I'm reminded of the story about the anime Gall Force: Earth Chapter. If you watch the first episode, what stands out is that all you are seeing, literally, are the keyframes. None of the betweens. Now, given how GOOD the first four Gall Force stories were, with the animation budget increasing each time, it's a horrible shock. The story I heard was someone broke in and stole the cels to sell to collectors (or for their personal collection) before they could film them. So, given time and budget they just used what they had. Luckily, the plot was up to their usual standards, but it wasn't until the third and final episode that the animation was back up to Rhea Gall Force levels.
Food Fight is amazing.
Last edited by JessicaMonroe (2014-03-11 06:06:24)
Dear lord, that is exactly what I would imagine an animated film by The Asylum would look like.
+2
As part of my continuing the family friendly portion of this website, I present to you a guilty pleasure movie of mine that I revisited today.
This is a film that certainly takes the concept of magic bean and stretches believability, but the trip is very much worth it. Three kidnappers (Joe Mantegna, Joe Pantoliano and Brian Haley) attempt an easy pay day by kidnapping a wealthy family's one year old child. However, there are two things working against them: they are stupid and the baby is the smartest child ever. Baby Bink (yes, that's the baby's name), decides to play out his favorite book and visit all the sights in the big city. All the while, he is chased by the kidnappers and his worried mother.
The movie is a family friendly comedy, with the kidnappers receiving fair share of injuries, while the child continues on, oblivious to the havoc.
Most people probably wouldn't have listed a review, but this is a gem of a comedy that many overlook. Like I said, it requires slowing a pretty large magic bean of a concept, as well as a fair dose of physical comedy. If that isn't your thing, on either count, you won't like it. However, if you can accept the premise, it is a good fun ride, featuring some actors in some earlier roles that are more recognizable now, including Fred Thompson, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Cynthia Nixon.
10/10
+1
Finally checked out Enough Said. It's too bad I took so long to see it, because it's really great. Very funny and sweet. It's always nice when characters in movies act and speak like real people.
Saw 300 - Rise of an Empire
* Lead is a Sam Worthington clone, right down to the lack of any charisma.
* Just a 5 minute sequence about what they're fighting for (achievements of Athens as laying the foundations of western civilization) would have been good. Zilch. No mention of Greek theatre, science, philosophy, Olympics, art, history, literature, etc.
* Speed-ramping cranked up to 11. Everyone sprayed with cartoon blood
* Opening sequence for the 490BC Battle of Marathon looked cool, but then the battles just went on and on until it was numbing.
* Many cast members from 300 return. More than you'd expect. Events play out parallel to Thermopylae.
* Most fascist movie since Leni Riefenstahl. Glorification of militarism.
* Couple of good score cues
* Set your expectations low - deserves its middling Rotten Tomatoes score.
* Lead is a Sam Worthington clone, right down to the lack of any charisma.
Yes but Sullivan Stapleton is a much cooler name 
* Just a 5 minute sequence about what they're fighting for (achievements of Athens as laying the foundations of western civilization) would have been good. Zilch. No mention of Greek theatre, science, philosophy, Olympics, art, history, literature, etc.
Well, he did talk about Democracy here and there...
Also, the amount of flying dust particles and fumes in the backgrounds of this movie astounded me. Fumes fade, they don't just blow around the scene forever. There wasn't that much fire at their camp. I guess that and the cartoon blood were their attempt at being visually innovative like the last movie... Nah. Overall I thought the visuals were pretty crappy by today's standards. Not necessarily the VFX, but the overall style.
the movie was stolen and had to be cobbled together with what's left of the budget. But bare in mind, this was around the time of Monsters Inc! Here's what the trailers showed it as, which manages to hide it's level of awfulness by picking the best animated parts of the movie... Which says something, really.
I haven't seen Food Fight, but I discovered it when somebody else did a commentary for it a while ago. I think it must have been a scam from the beginning. Somebody took the money from the studio and the product placement sponsors and paid off-shore animators to do the minimum to produce a film, then claimed "ZOMG! The movie was stolen! Here is what I could make out of what was left." I'll bet the actors even got stiffed.
After all, who could and would "steal the movie"--meaning, in this case, the hard drives from dozens of computers--and yet not release at least pieces of it on the Internet?
Last edited by Zarban (2014-03-15 07:18:25)
Salinger - Great documentary on the late J.D. Salinger. Really looking forward to seeing his unreleased works start hitting the shelves next year.
Senna - Another great documentary - follows the F-1 racing life of Brazilian hero Ayrton Senna. F-1 racing blows the holy socks off of anything Nascar could ever hope to be. It's a fascinating look at a man who was doomed by his own passion.
Last edited by Chad Peter (2014-03-16 21:35:45)
Oh god, I despised Salinger. Overblown to the point of hilarity. They present ten seconds of blurry footage of the guy (his back turned to the camera) like it's unseen footage of a second shooter on the grassy knoll.
I thought Salinger was fine, but the bits where it was like a search for Bigfoot were quite ridiculous, yeah.
Well, has anyone seen Bigfoot since Salinger died? Just saying...
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