What Movies Have You Seen Lately?

Quote: Evenbob

Tried watching The Master

Director Anderson's work below. The gap between 2007 and 2012 is noticeable, where did he go?

2014 Inherent Vice (post-production)
2013 Back Beyond (Video short)
2012 The Master
2007 There Will Be Blood
2003 Blossoms & Blood (Video short)
2003 Mattress Man Commercial (Video short)
2003 Couch (TV Short)
2002 Punch-Drunk Love
2001 Saturday Night Live: The Best of Molly Shannon (Video short) (segment "FANatic")
2000 Saturday Night Live (TV Series) (1 episode)- Ben Affleck/Fiona Apple (2000) ... (segment "Fanatic")
2000 SNL Fanatic (TV Short)
1999 Magnolia
1998 Flagpole Special (Video short)
1997 Boogie Nights
1996 Hard Eight
1993 Cigarettes & Coffee (Short) (as Paul Anderson)
1988 The Dirk Diggler Story (Short) (as Paul Anderson)

Highlighted the movies that have gotten the most attention, plus 'Hard 8' which a lot of us probably watched after being told at WoV that it had gambling scenes. There's some reviews at WoV I think if you searched. What struck me in 'Hard 8' was that the old man would surely be caught, having left evidence all over the place including a witness, but the movie goes on to suggest he'll get away with it. I can praise directors who do stuff like that only so much, but I tend to like this guy's work, I saw some of the others. If it is the case that the new movie is too weird to watch, that could say a lot about where he disappeared to for 5 years or so.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000759/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

The Master cost 30 mil to make and made
26 mil worldwide. I remember in the two
weeks before it came out they were bombing
every network with constant ads because
they know it stunk really bad. Had to cost
another 20 mil at least.

Of course the critics loved it because they
couldn't understand it. Except Rex Reed,
who is usually pretty honest.

"Call The Master whatever you want, but lobotomized catatonia from what I call the New Hacks can never take the place of well-made narrative films about real people that tell profound stories for a broader and more sophisticated audience. Fads come and go, but as Walter Kerr used to say, 'I'll yell tripe whenever tripe is served.'

Having the writer also be the director and
the producer might have had something
to do with it's epic failure.

Quote: odiousgambit

Director Anderson's work below. The gap between 2007 and 2012 is noticeable, where did he go?

So is the gap between 2003 and 2007.

Maybe he takes care of the kids while his soul mate brings home the money.

What's funny is, Scientology sent Tom Cruise
to a private screening to see if the movie was
about Scientology, or mocked it. Cruise gave
the thumbs up, probably because like everybody
else, he had no idea what was happening. I did
fast forward to the end and saw Hoffman singing
the entire song Slow Boat to China, acapella, to
Phoenix. Very strange scene, almost scary. Mostly
because Hoffman was a terrible singer.

'Safe', with Jason Stratham. Tight from start to
end, non stop action, great better than average
story. Good escapism entertainment.

"Australia"

Sort of a Western, with the old theme of regular folks up against formidable bad guys, thus needing a John Wayne or there is no hope.

Modern sensibilities for this Western. Set as WWII begins, the unenlightened treatment of the Aborigines is severely brought to task. The now often seen plot mechanism of a numinous character from previous persecution ... this time a grizzled, aged Aborigine chieftain of sorts ... is very effective in spite of being endowed excessively with magical powers.

Even though I saw it on cable, some of the nakedness of the Aborigines was censored out; the final scene has the chieftain walking away from the camera and his exposed rear end was pixelated out. I thought that was excessively puritan even for regular TV these days.

Not a classic but worth seeing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455824/?ref_=nv_sr_1

had to look this up [g]

http://grammarist.com/spelling/pixelated-pixilated/

And So It Goes, the new movie with Douglas
and Keaton, must be a real turkey. I can't
watch any network without endless ads for
it, and it doesn't open for another week.

Douglas is 70 and Keaton is almost 70 and
looks 75. It's already rated by 117 people
on IMDB and has a very poor 5.4, which
means it stinks. Another flop by director
Rob Reiner, no surprise there.

His movie Magic of Belle Isle made 100K
at the BO. Flipped cost 14mil and didn't
even make 2mil. I think the last hit he
had in the last 20 years was Bucket List,
which was so dumb I didn't even see all of it.

Quote: Wizard

I saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Saturday.

The rebooted Plant of the Apes series is much more of a critical success than the 2001 remake. But the 2001 movie was a solid financial hit, not far behind Ocean's Eleven which was turned immediately into two circles, and gave George Clooney the finances to buy his Italian mansion and pursue his directing career.

I wonder what happened to the original remake? Why wasn't that pursued further?


2001 Ocean's Eleven: Production Budget: $85 million | $183,417,150 + $267,300,000 = $450,717,150 (Domestic + Foreign)
2001 Planet of the Apes: Production Budget: $100 million |$180,011,740 + $182,200,000 = $362,211,740
2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Production Budget: $93 million | $176,760,185 +$305,040,864 = $481,801,049

Despite the 2001 film being a success commercially, it just wasn't very good. Burton said that he would rather jump out a window than to direct a sequel. And the original remake took 13 years from concept to movie. The ending of the movie was very confusing. The movie was very different than the rest of the franchise, which disenfranchised some of the original fans.

My bet is that Fox thought that a remake would be too risky and could flop. Still, $262 million in profit is awesome, but Ice Age, X2, Day After Tomorrow were better. Mind you, Day After Tomorrow was the only one of those that didn't get sequels.

Quote: boymimbo

My bet is that Fox thought that a remake would be too risky and could flop. Still, $262 million in profit is awesome, but Ice Age, X2, Day After Tomorrow were better. Mind you, Day After Tomorrow was the only one of those that didn't get sequels.

That was a good answer. The film didn't have a clear ending that made a following story obvious. It's hard to make a movie if your principals don't want anything to do with it.
In a sense, "Day After Tomorrow" did get a sequel in "2012".

But profit isn't that high. The studio takes half the domestic box office, and less than half of the international. But they make money on PPV, Tv rights, DVD sales, secondary marketing etc.

Still it was a successful film, and in the last decade almost all such films get a sequel. Out of the sixteen films that made a billion dollars worldwide on their original run, most of them were sequels.