Tuesday, December 29

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42 Days Of Suggestions

[Stickied.  I forgot I could sticky things.]

As I mentioned, I'm planning to watch and review 42 films in the space of 42 days - the summer school holidays here in Sydney.

I can probably find 42 films to watch, but I'm certainly open to suggestions.  Just three requirements:
  1. I haven't seen it before.*
  2. It must have some redeeming quality.
  3. It must be available in some reasonable way.


List

3. Brave **½
4. The Iron Giant **½
5. The Prestige
6. Inside Out ***
7. Inception
8. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
9. Skyfall
10. Dark City
11. The Shawshank Redemption
12. The Martian
13. Mad Max
14. The Mouretsu Pirates Movie
15. Frozen **
16. Interstellar
17. 300
18. Crank ***
19. Metropolis
20. Watchmen
21. Sucker Punch
22. Pacific Rim
23. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
24. Only Yesterday
25. A Monster in Paris ****
26. Shoot 'Em Up
27. Minority Report
28. Secondhand Lions
29. To Kill a Mockingbird
30. Arrietty ***½
31. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
32. Army of Darkness
34. Desperado
35. Sin City
38. Double Indemnity
39. The K-On! Movie ***
40. The Adventures of Tintin **½
41. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya ***
42. Star Wars: The Force Awakens ***

(I may rearrange the order depending on what I feel like watching from day to day, but I plan to get to everything on the list.)

Scores

**** Everything it could have been and everything I could have wanted. It's rare for a film to do both; I'm not objective in my ratings and don't pretend to be.

*** Very good, well worth watching, and recommended.

** Adequate. Or perhaps it was well-made but didn't grab me, or it grabbed me but was badly flawed. Something you might watch on a rainy afternoon and not count your time wasted.

* Not very good at all. Not recommended unless you are feeling particularly perverse.

Ø A stinker with no net merit whatsoever. A black hole where talent and money went to die.


* Which you can't possibly know unless I've mentioned it here, so fire away.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:08 PM | Comments (29) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 383 words, total size 4 kb.

1

The Nanoha A's movie and the Mouretsu Pirates movie.

Also Keroro Gunsou Movie #5. (Which takes place on Easter Island.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, December 21 2015 01:18 PM (+rSRq)

2

Bug alert:

I just did something strange to the formatting for my page and I don't know what. Help?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, December 21 2015 02:25 PM (+rSRq)

3 Never mind. I found it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, December 21 2015 02:26 PM (+rSRq)

4 Yay!

The Mouretsu Pirates movie might be a good one.  I've lined up a few recommendations at work, and got an iTunes gift card in our office Secret Santa.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 21 2015 04:02 PM (PiXy!)

5 So the list at the moment:
1. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (1 elephant) 2. Twelve Monkeys (3 monkeys) 3. Brave 4. The Prestige 5. Inside Out 6. Inception

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 21 2015 04:20 PM (PiXy!)

6 The Princess Bride
Better Off Dead
The Gods Must Be Crazy

Jackie Chan's City Hunter (I don't know if you can track down a copy - I ended up with a Hong Kong LD, plus a rough translation from Usenet which clarified things, but wasn't absolutely necessary)

Posted by: Hypozeuxis at Tuesday, December 22 2015 05:35 PM (KR/O2)

7

Have you ever seen The 36th Chamber of Shaolin? It's one of the very best kung fu movies, a shining star in a sea of dreck. Very much worth your while, but it may be a bit difficult to find.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, December 22 2015 05:59 PM (+rSRq)

8 Hypo - I've seen The Princess Bride many times, and The Gods Must Be Crazy once or twice.  Haven't seen Better Off Dead, but it's not on Netflix or iTunes, so I'll have to look around.

Steven - I haven't seen The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and it's available on Netflix, so I'll put that on the list.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, December 22 2015 07:17 PM (PiXy!)

9 Tampopo The Triplets of Belleville Secondhand Lions

Posted by: Don at Wednesday, December 23 2015 03:45 AM (0kRhp)

10 When I click on the "Edit" after my comment, it merely reloads the page rather than lets me fix the comment. (Each title should be on a separate line.) This happens in both Safari and Chrome.

Posted by: Don at Wednesday, December 23 2015 03:54 AM (0kRhp)

11

I don't think there's supposed to be any ability to edit existing comments. I sure have never seen any such button.

If there's a bug here, it's probably that button showing up.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, December 23 2015 06:34 AM (+rSRq)

12 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/How about "Minority Report"?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, December 23 2015 08:35 AM (+rSRq)

13

Dammit.

How about "Minority Report"?

 

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, December 23 2015 08:36 AM (+rSRq)

14 John Wick. 

Shoot 'Em Up
.  Which is John Wick done as black humor.

Sin City... the first one, which is very good, as opposed to Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, which is good only if you're deeply familiar with the comics, and even then it's not so great.

The Adventures of Tintin.

The Stranger.  My favorite Orson Welles movie, despite it not being anywhere near his best work.

Moneyball.  Because I don't know how much you know about baseball, and I'd love to hear what someone who isn't a fan of the sport thinks about the film.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, December 23 2015 01:12 PM (zAcee)

15 Shoot 'Em Up is on my iTunes account, though I don't remember buying it, so that goes on the list.  
I'll take a look at the others - they all sound like good suggestions, but none of them are on Netflix.  Netflix Australia doesn't have much of a catalog.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, December 23 2015 01:38 PM (PiXy!)

16 Minority Report is on Netflix.  Added.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, December 23 2015 01:40 PM (PiXy!)

17 Don - no-one seems to have Tampopo.  I'll give Secondhand Lions a try.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, December 23 2015 03:53 PM (PiXy!)

18 Quite probably safe to skip Sucker Punch, even if it is pretty to look at. I'd suggest Primer and A Scanner Darkly.

Posted by: Artee at Thursday, December 24 2015 11:18 AM (5blmT)

19 Sucker Punch is worth it just for the best live-action rendition of an anime fight ever.

That alone makes up for the rest of the film.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, December 24 2015 11:59 AM (zAcee)

20 The best review of Sucker Punch I ever read was basically: "Things The Internet Likes: The Movie". It's visually spectacular, and braindead, and I own a copy on DVD that I dust off from time to time smile

Posted by: Artee at Thursday, December 24 2015 12:12 PM (5blmT)

21 I looked for a copy of Primer today.  It's not on Netflix or iTunes, and JB Hifi didn't have it either.  If I can get it it will go on the list.  (This thing will run until the end of January, so that seems likely...)
I don't mind watching a movie that's a visual spectacle with an idiot plot, as long as the director doesn't deeply believe it's more than that.  Also, I already have Sucker Punch; I think it was on a 2 for $20 sale.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 24 2015 01:20 PM (PiXy!)

22 Two (or three, depending on how you want to count them) more for you:

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift.  Big goofy fun with cars in Japan.  Notable for being the entry in the FF franchise almost entirely lacking in Vin Diesel.  Also notable for a female lead with an almost perfectly square face and a jawline that could cut diamonds.  I was shocked at how much I liked it.

Desperado and/or its older, less expensive prequel El Mariachi.   EM was shot for $7000.  D was shot for $7million.  One has Antonio Banderas and a young Salma Hayek.  The other was shot for $7000.  Both were directed by Robert Rodriguez who also did Sin City and its sequel.  I'm a big fan of Desperado, not as huge a fan of EM... mainly because it looks like it was shot for $7000, and the acting is, shall we say, spotty.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, December 24 2015 02:05 PM (zAcee)

23 The Lego Movie Iron Monkey -- non-gloomy kung-fu action Casablanca (just in case you haven't seen it) Cars (because you mentioned you could be talked into giving it another shot; it's not my favorite Pixar by a long stretch, but it's still worthwhile)

Posted by: Griffin at Thursday, December 24 2015 03:48 PM (fEEE3)

24 The City of Lost Children

Planes: Fire and Rescue. No, seriously. The first might have just been an attempt to do Cars with an airplane, but the second actually had a decent story.

Oh, and to go with Desperado and El Mariachi, "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", also with Banderas and Hayek.

Gattaca

Dark City

Kamikaze Girls - A Gothic Lolita stuck in the hinterlands of Japan hooks up with her polar opposite, a biker chick, and it gets bizarre from there.

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, December 24 2015 04:49 PM (5Ktpu)

25 Rush--the 2013 Ron Howard movie about the James Hunt/Nikki Lauda rivalry (warnings for nudity, coarse language, and disturbingly realistic/gory portrayals of '70s-era Formula One crashes)

Truth in 24 and Truth in 24 II: Every Second Counts--Audi's self-made documentaries about their 2008 and 2011 Le Mans campaigns (warnings for Audi corporate braggadocio and Jason Statham narration)

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Friday, December 25 2015 12:18 PM (XC8ds)

26 I second Rush.  A very good movie that happens to be about Formula 1, as opposed a Formula 1 movie that happens to be very good.

I'm not big on the Truth in 24 films, though.  That's just me.

If you haven't seen it already, might I suggest Big Hero 6 for your list?  I just finished watching it (literally, like, 10 minutes ago) and was quite impressed.  I think Pixar would have been happy with it if they had done it which they didn't.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, December 25 2015 02:08 PM (zAcee)

27 Unfortunately (if that's the right word) I've already seen Big Hero 6.  I like it a lot; it's a little uneven but a lot of fun.  And I loved the setting of San Fransokyo.  I want to live there.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, December 25 2015 02:47 PM (PiXy!)

28 I'm not surprised you've seen it already, honestly... about a quarter of the world did when it came out, after all.  If I wasn't allergic to people, I would have gone to see it in the theaters.  Lovely film.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, December 25 2015 03:10 PM (zAcee)

29 "Lion in Winter"

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Saturday, January 23 2016 12:09 PM (lU4ZJ)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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