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[Drewbacca]

Alright, I've created this thread in an attempt to open up some discussion about awesome and great (or bad) movies that you've recently seen and want to talk about. For me, I recently saw a couple of movies or TV show DVDs I felt compelled to speak about, but didn't have a forum to do so.

The sands of time have quickly made me forget. But this weekend I've had the pleasure of watching both The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (which I've seen before when I was young) and also The Shawshank Redemption (which I had also seen when I was younger). I saw both of these movies on TV, and didn't realize which movies they actually were until this weekend when I decided to rewatch them both.

My god, both movies are awesome. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is such an amazing western, definitely entertaining. My one complaint is that the movie does seem to run on abit much. The movie does well with itself to avoid a huge plot and drives itself forward through situations and scenarios (easily recognizable cliche's that help people follow the movie while eating pop corn, or occasionally going take a piss). Clint Eastwood is such a bad ass, but Lee Van Cleef is 10x more bad than him. Like at the beginning when he is hired to kill a man, and the man who he is hired to kill pays Lee (The Bad) to kill the man who sent him. Well, old Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) obliges, but informs the man that he sees through on a task once he's taken up on it. He shoots the man, and his son comes running down the stairs in shock, but then Angel Eyes busts him in the face too. This was the highlight of the movie, because this young gun reminded me of Opaque. Then, when Lee goes back to collect his money for killing the man, he informs his boss that the man, before being brutally shot, payed him to kill him. The boss laughs, but angel eyes tells him what he told his last victim (minus the kid): When he's hired to do a job, he follows through on it.

He then kills the man, and takes both heaps of cash. This is the extreme opposite of what we now understand to be EMO and why this movie is so amazing.

Anyway, it's an awesome movie and I hadn't seen it until this weekend for a long, long time. And I was so young back then that I didn't realize what it was, and the same holds true with the Shawshank Redemption.

I had caught portions of this movie on TV (Brooks' suicide), but never caught the ENTIRE movie. I watched it this Sunday and find myself willing to pay full price for a DVD containing these particular captured beams of light. The movie is about a man named Andy (Tim Robbins. If that name doesn't ring a bell think the Public Access News Guy from Anchorman), wrongly accused of murdering his wife and her male mistress. The movie is smart, compelling and totally unpretentious despite being chalked full of metaphoric symbolism and extremely fluent and gripping writing. It also stars Morgan Freeman as a fellow inmate and confidant of Andy. Shawshank is the prison, run by a malicious warden up to no good, and under the guise of God. I won't ruin the surprise for anybody who hasn't seen it, but:

Come-uppin's in this movie are plentiful and cleverly written.

So that's what this thread is about. If you've recently seen Firefly, no need to start up a Firefly thread or bump ancient relics from the past, just talk about it in here.

[Mzo]

cleverly written

Yeah, Shawshank's a great short story by Stephen King that was VERY faithfully rendered into this movie. I have the DVD, and that says loads, since I rarely buy any movies.

And I'm sure you can think of a better reference point for Tim Robbins than ANCHORMAN, lol.

Hudsucker Proxy, at least.

[Drewbacca]

Most people wouldn't recognize him there either, though. Anchorman was a recent movie, and it's super mainstream, so it fits. I was tempted to add a note after the reference that if they needed me to put that in there they should find another thread to talk in.

[YellerDog]

I've been watching the Back to the Future Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Orson Wells' Touch of Evil. All good for different reasons.

[Glass Joe]

I recently got "The man with no name" trilogy and watched all 3 of them. I found all of them to be great, but I thought that "A fist full of dollars" was the best one. It just seemed to have everything right. Most people give "The good, the bad, and the ugly" the nod as the best of the three but I would recommend watching them all over. Lee Van Cleef is a bad ass in "For a few dollars more" too.

[Drewbacca]

I've been watching the Back to the Future Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Orson Wells' Touch of Evil. All good for different reasons.

Is Touch of Evil in the same frame as the other two (more fun)?

[YellerDog]

Is Touch of Evil in the same frame as the other two (more fun)?

It's just a damn good movie. Charlton Heston does a great job as a Mexican, too (heh). I picked up a revised version of the movie that cleans up the opening scene, which is a very cool, three minute continuious shot of a time bomb being placed in the trunk of a car in Mexico and following the car all the way across the US border.

As it's driving, we see the main characters walking down the road, and the car is just sort of creeping in the background, but you're watching it every second. Such a great Hitchcock-style setup.

[Eightbitbreaks]

I just watched Oldboy this weekend and I liked it a lot. I want to watch Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance now. My friend told me the director's movies all have twists at the end, similar to M Night Shalamaladingdong's style. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I guess.

[Drewbacca]

It's a good thing if the twist delivers (the usual suspect), or the movie is good enough to hold the twist (seven), but in most cases it just ends up being a gimmick used to bring movie goers into the theatre with a gimmick. I have access to Old Boy, but is it worth it?

I just finished watching The Count of Monte Cristo and it was a decent swashbuckling tale that started off strong and lost its romance as the film progressed. A lot of the scenes are corny, and cheese laden towards the end, so the payoff of the whole "revenge" plot dulls significantly. Still, it has enough going for it that it's a worthwhile watch, but next to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and The Shawshank Redemption it doesn't stack up.

[Cowutopia]

I'm watching the Oscars (good excuse for family time) and I have to say, the appearance of my musical idol Yo Yo Ma has made this show 1,000,000 times better.

But I really wanted to talk about aforementioned Shawshank...did Morgan Freeman win for that too?