What movies have you seen recently?

[Lieutenant Dan]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Clerks and Clerks 2 are all-time classic comedies to me.

I enjoy Smith's work. Plus in Clerks 2, Rosario Dawson fits in well with them and she's always easy on the eyes.

Oh hell yes.

[DonkeyJote]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Clerks

I thought it was hilarious, it definitely had a different feel then any comedy i've seen but the fact that none of it felt forced was great.

I really, really hated that movie.

[Brandwin]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

I watched Silver Linings Playbook over the weekend, I really enjoyed it, even though we missed the first 5 minutes because of the stupid theater worker.

For those who did see it, do you mind spoiler what happens in the first 5-10 minutes?

[SPTO]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Clerks is an all-time classic. The sequel, not so much. I wish they had stuck with the low budget black and white camera work.

[Mo]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

I watched Silver Linings Playbook over the weekend, I really enjoyed it, even though we missed the first 5 minutes because of the stupid theater worker.

For those who did see it, do you mind spoiler what happens in the first 5-10 minutes?

Spoiler

Cooper gives a speech on something, Cooper's mom picks him up from Psych Ward, Tucker hitches ride, then is driven back because he's not supposed to leave yet

That's all I remember

[SPTO]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

I can't seem to shake movies with remakes off my back. Luckily my next movie doesn't have a remake (Thank God!) Anyways, let's get this started. The original movie was released in 1933 and is called The Nuisance and stars Lee Tracy whom I reviewed in another movie quite a while ago on this thread. This is THE prototypical role for him as he plays a shyster lawyer who is every stereotype of the ambulance chaser. (in fact the remake is called The Chaser) The gist of the movie is that you see his operation in place where he rushes to the scene of an accident, convinces victims to fake injuries, has his own people be fake witnesses and in some cases uses one of his people to "accidentally" get hit by cars etc etc.

Tracy, who plays Joseph P. Stevens is a huge thorn on the side of the cable car company in the city and they want to take him down after the last straw in losing another case to him so the special prosecutor who works for the company comes up with a plan that'll wreck Stevens once and for all. They hire a beautiful young woman named Dorothy Mason (Madge Evans) to be at the scene of a big cable car accident which catches Stevens' eye. He tries to woo her into going along with his scheme but she is resistant which makes him want to make it work even more because he's not only interested in raking in the dough but he finds her attractive as well. She gets the scoop on Stevens' operation and meets his doctor friend who falsifies x-rays and comes out with sham diagnoses. The doctor in a lot of ways is a very interesting character here played by Frank Morgan of Wizard of Oz fame. Morgan gives the character such a sad and sympathetic portrayal as he's a drunk who's deeply indebted to Stevens. It's all very sad to watch and it halts the fun time/breeziness of the rest of the movie in a good way.

Anywho, Mason contacts her employer, they entrap the doc and gets him to give up information on what he does and shows off fake x-rays. Stevens discovers the doc in the middle of the act and gives him what for whereupon the doc protects Stevens by intentionally getting run over by a car rather than face having to testify against the man he loves like a son. Things go on and Stevens finds out that Mason is working for the cable car company but marries her in order to save his skin because in those days wives were not allowed to testify against their husbands and we get a great scene at Joe's apartment where he basically calls her out and she then admits that she loves Joe but he's so blinded by the thought that she was just a double dealing woman that he blows her off and she leaves angry beyond words. The Cable Car people have her thrown in jail for perjury as she had to lie about being a victim of the accident in order to take down Stevens and since that didn't work out they might as well make her suffer.

Joe catches wind of this and goes to Calhoun (John Miljan) the special prosecutor and offers to end his practice and leave town so long as they let her go but Calhoun refuses and then makes the mistake of telling Joe that she knew she'd be risking her freedom for him. This hits Joe like a ton of bricks as he finally realizes that Dorothy DOES love him and he moves heaven and earth to get her out including using old statutes to foul up the cable car service and arresting drivers. This seems to work but then the cable car company uses buses and he tries again but to no avail as the cable car people WON'T give Dorothy up. Joe than frames up Calhoun by staging an accident and making it look like Calhoun was drunk and carrying on with a hooker/loose girl. Well this is enough to make Calhoun give up and we end happily ever after.

WHEW......

This is actually not a bad movie at all and Lee Tracy was born to play this role as he's charming, scheming, villainous, and witty all wrapped in one ball. His fast talking style and gesticulations were spot on and one has to believe that while he didn't invent the shyster stereotype he played it to such perfection that this role is pretty definitive. I did think the last third of the film stretched things a bit as he used to be a good lawyer who believed in justice but after losing to Calhoun on a technicality he decided to become jaded and use every dirty trick in the book. There is some humanity to the character but it's so deeply buried under his outward appearance and bravado that it DOES take a woman like Dorothy to bring out his good side. Speaking of Dorothy, Madge Evans has probably the hardest role in the film and she pulls it off very well. She's at first someone who's willing to see Stevens in the slammer but starts to see the good in him underneath his veneer of streetwise smarts and by the middle of the film she's not sure whether to work with the cable car people or come clean and tell Stevens everything. Evans does a great job of being a temptress to Stevens but when things start changing you see she's actually a good kind hearted woman. It's one of those roles where subtlety in acting helps to change perception and she does it magnificently.

As I said before Frank Morgan is GREAT as the doctor and while his drunkenness seemed slightly over the top I think it was portrayed realistically enough. Morgan in real life had a problem with the bottle himself so he was playing the character from experience i'm sure. This leads into a whole subplot within the movie of a German woman whose husband has died and Stevens is trying to win a monetary settlement for her but she wants to marry some other guy BEFORE the trial and they do all kinds of things to delay that including doing a false (and funny) examination of the other guy and making him think he's sick. It's all a bit silly but fun and it led to one of the best lines in the whole movie where she says she wants another doctor to look at her man and says "all German doctors are good" and one of Stevens' men makes a quip about Hitler.

All in all I enjoyed this movie a lot despite it not being very realistic. The remake The Chaser (1938) doesn't change much if anything at all. In fact, there is some stock footage from the original movie! A lot of lines are lifted verbatim but there are some teeny weeny differences mostly in dialogue. So to judge this movie it has to be on the strength of the acting and well....That's where it falls down a bit. I think i'd have enjoyed this a lot more if I wasn't aware of the original.

Dennis O'Keefe is the lead and his version of the character is a lot less of a stereotype, talks a lot slower and doesn't have the kind of wild gesticulation of Tracy which makes the movie suffer because in lines where Tracy nailed it with all that exaggeration O'Keefe makes it seem bland and ordinary. It's very hard to believe that he's been so successful by bending and breaking the rules to his advantage. Ann Moriss (never heard of her) plays the Dorothy role and again it lacks something. She's a little more cold in her portrayal and it's hard to believe O'Keefe could've fallen for her and she for him. She doesn't handle the subtlety of the role as well as Evans did so the revelation that she loves him comes off all wrong. That being said, there was one role that while maybe not better, but more nuanced was Lewis Stone as the doctor. He's a more "believable" drunk of the functioning drunk variety. He doesn't have as much fake bravado as Morgan's portrayal but he adds to the "fallen from grace" aspect of the character. You really believe that he was once a great doctor/surgeon who's been beaten by his addiction to alcohol.

Even the actor who plays "floppy" Phil (the guy who always gets "run over" and is essentially the lead's right hand man) was played better in the original.

I guess this is what happens when there's no TV or video tape as MGM just decided to lift the script from the old film and redo it for audiences 5 years later. I can't really say it's because Hollywood was creatively bankrupt like it is today in a lot of ways but rather they were just giving people something they might've liked before in a new form. That being said, this was more on the lazy side as it's virtually the same flick because even remakes in the Golden Age of Hollywood would add something new or different. This one didn't add anything at all to the proceedings and came off as being a warmed over version of the original.

The Nuisance: 2 1/2 stars (I dock a half star for some of the convoluted machinations and the (too fast) redemption of Stevens)

The Chaser: 2 stars (probably would like this more if I hadn't seen the original)


Sorry for length, next review will be a lot shorter as i'll be diving back into the John Carpenter oeuvre with Christine (1983)

[Blzer]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Battleship

Peter Berg is a poor man's Michael Bay. What he makes up for with more story and maturity, he loses with more eclipse. When I thought the film's pick-up would take me through for a stellar ride, it lost my attention five minutes into it. It is largely one action-packed war on the water off the harbor. I think the last 15-20 minutes made a pretty good statement on the edge of your seat, but it was too lackluster and "generic" to really suit this kind of flavor that these action directors give. If it was more of a drama tale, I think I would dig it more. Don't know how you can invite aliens and make it so, though. Speaking of which, pretty poor CGI. I think that's what sickens me most about movies this days.

[goh]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

The Man with the Iron Fists

I watched the unrated extended version. There was a lot of awesome but it dragged a lot too. Theatrical version might be better because the pacing wasn't very good.

Skyfall

Only one version but same problem. Lots of awesome,lots of dragging. Nice ending.

[Scott]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Here Comes The Boom

The gf and I really enjoyed this movie, we saw in theaters also, but then again, I'm a pretty big Kevin James fan...

[PhilliesFan13]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Here Comes The Boom

The gf and I really enjoyed this movie, we saw in theaters also, but then again, I'm a pretty big Kevin James fan...

I'm a huge Kevin James fan, but for whatever reason the trailers for this movie never really got my attention. I've been hearing a lot of good things about it so I think I will check it out eventually.

[Scott]

I'm a huge Kevin James fan, but for whatever reason the trailers for this movie never really got my attention. I've been hearing a lot of good things about it so I think I will check it out eventually.

I really enjoyed it, plus how can you not like The Fonz is in it...

[Mo]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

A Good Day to Die Hard


I died a little inside sitting through this. I give it a 4/10 rating.

[ScoobySnax]

A Good Day to Die Hard


I died a little inside sitting through this. I give it a 4/10 rating.

Wow! I wasn't expecting this. What was so bad about it?

[Mo]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Wow! I wasn't expecting this. What was so bad about it?

I went in expecting a fun movie with lots of action, but the Story and dialogue is super super weak

I'll spoiler this, while trying to not give much away.

Spoiler

Spoiler

There's no story/plot/point to it all. The Big Bad is a big who cares, what I mean is unlike the Grubers and colonel Stewart you never know why the Big Bad is supposed to be bad, other that the fact that McClane is shooting his guys.


Bruce spends most of the movie shouting out bad one liners, and even repeats many of them.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: What movies have you seen recently?

Dead Fall........this movie made no sense what so ever.