mrbasehart's Film Challenge! - COMPLETE

[Tripe]

Weird, I didn't see it on the list when I suggested it. My suggestion of Quigley made me think of it.

[mrbasehart]

Yeah.  I thought I'd rated it, but I guess not.

[spaceforarent]

And then there's David Bowie....Man Who Fell To Earth and Merry Christmas. Mr. Lawrence.

There's also Bowie in Labyrinth, which I haven't seen so take that as you may.

Labyrinth is an awesome movie!

I guess I'll have to see it someday. It has always seemed to me to be something you need to be nostalgic about to really enjoy when you're older, so I just decided not to bother.

[ScottotD]

Houseboat Horror
Welcome to Woop Woop
Crocodile Dundee 3
Pooty Tang
Dream a little Dream
License to Drive
The Gate
Digby went down
The Mighty
Basic Instinct 2

[mrbasehart]

Digby went down

Do you mean Igby Goes Down? There's no record of Digby Went Down on the imdb.

And just a small update: I've "acquired" about 7 or 8 of the movies from the list so far.  Tripe's suggestions all came in one "pack", which was convenient.

[ScottotD]

oops, typo.

[Tripe]

Digby went down

Do you mean Igby Goes Down? There's no record of Digby Went Down on the imdb.

And just a small update: I've "acquired" about 7 or 8 of the movies from the list so far.  Tripe's suggestions all came in one "pack", which was convenient.

From RD Films?Could you make me some copies?

[Tripe]

Oh and here's a few more

The Bargee
The Plank
Whistle Down The Wind

[mrbasehart]

Okay, so I saw the first film on this list today.  Shall I post comments in this thread, or in the movies we've been watching thread?

[Tripe]

I'd do the review here since the lists is specific to this thread, but you could mention it in the film thread with a link to here.

[Relaxing Dragon]

Raw Force maybe?

[mrbasehart]

I'd do the review here since the lists is specific to this thread, but you could mention it in the film thread with a link to here.

Well, I'm 2 months behind on the movies I've seen, so it would take a while to finally get around to the list.  I'll post it in here:

A Thief in the Night is a horror movie about a shy girl and a married man who has just recovered from a stay hospital who both becomes vulnerable to the advances of a cult with ideas about the world ending soon.  Perceptive in its demonstration of how societal and familial pressures can distort innocent, clean-cut people into loopy cultists who seem to speak of nothing else than the glorious freedom that their particular belief system grants them.  Well.... It would be, but the aforementioned cult is actually about Christianity, and how people need to open themselves up to Jesus before the rapture steals all the good ones from the Earth leaving the rest of humanity at the mercy of Satan.  And guess what happens? Yep.  Instead of horror movie, we have moral lesson movie (although it takes a final swerve in the last 20 minutes into bat-shit crazy movie) with everyone spouting from pamphlets and biblical lessons rather than actually talking like real people.  And seriously? If that God is representative of the one we're supposed to have, then he can go fuck himself.  The movie blows, technically, artistically, and even from the only sane viewpoint someone can have of the movie: as propaganda.  It doesn't incite fear or religious fervor as much as the odd chuckle and mild bemusement.  It's a long-ass 66 minutes.

[Tripe]

The movie blows, technically, artistically, and even from the only sane viewpoint someone can have of the movie: as propaganda.  It doesn't incite fear or religious fervor as much as the odd chuckle and mild bemusement.  It's a long-ass 66 minutes.

Yeap, that was my reaction too, and you have three more to slog through 

[mrbasehart]

Bob Roberts is a political satire, presented as a documentary, about a "rebel republican" Senatorial candidate played by Tim Robbins (who also wrote and directed.)  As he tours the state of Pennsylvania, we see him use his growing popularity as a folk musician to levy his celebrity into political gain, though it seems that something far more sinister lurks underneath the wholesome image, as presented by his shady backroom staff and Roberts' own actions later in the movie.  There's a lot to like in Robbins' debut feature: the documentary form is perfect for the movie, allowing the use of news footage and interviews to deepen Roberts' character and give context to his election bid.  It also seems to weirdly mirror Bob Dylan, most clearly in the emulation of Bob Dylan's music video for Subterranean Homesick Blues and the parodying of some scenes of DA Pennebaker's Dont Look Back.  The movie also has a great cast, topped by a terrifically straight performance from Robbins.  However, there were things that bothered me.  The movies agenda becomes all too obvious in its final third, ironically weakening its bite and exposing the bias of the film-maker.  I'm not opposed to bias, per se, but when the movie had been so delicately balanced up until the point, it's a little disappointing.

[mrbasehart]

Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment:

Date Movie [Unrated Edition]:  I'm proud to say that I've now seen all of the entires in the "movie" series, and though this isn't the worst of them - hello Meet the Spartans - this is still a terrible film by any standards.  Alyson Hannigan plays a fat chick (oh how funny the jokes are about how disgusting fat people are!) who is desperate to find Mr. Right, and finds a Niles Crane lookin' fella who seems to take an interest in her.  Getting plastic surgery, she ends up looking a lot like that Willow chick from BtVS, and proceeds to date and get engaged to Niles Crane while "parodying" many of the movies of the time, most notably Meet the Parents.  I'm putting "parodying" in quotes because, like the excellent Joe Barlow at cinemaslave.com said, referencing other movies outright isn't parodying them: there's a perfect example of that at the very beginning of the movie, where a Napoleon Dynamite character shows up, does some fake Napoleon Dynamite schtick, and is never seen again.  It happens over and over again in the "movie" set of films, but all you're doing is saying "remember this bit from this other film? Isn't that funny that we've put that bit of their film in this one, that's totally unrelated to the plot? It's FUNNY." It's even lazier than the exagerations of original jokes from other movies, of which there are plenty too.  I feel sorry for Alyson Hannigan, who seems game and even quite charming in the lead role, though she's given absolutely nothing to work with.  I laughed once, and it was where they beat up a drunk guy.  That's one more laugh than Meet the Spartans gave me, though one less than Epic Movie.