Resurrecting the Movies thread...

[Front-Ranger]

Tonight I watched Jack the Giant Slayer and I enjoyed it much more than Gone Girl. Nick Hoult was excellent as Jack.

[Front-Ranger]

That's one of the reasons I don't like BA, actually. For instance, in Argo, there was a scene where he had just put on a shirt and he was buttoning it up. He was standing in front of a mirror so as to maximize the view of his luxuriantly hairy chest (oddly, his chest in GG had only a bit of hair). It was a totally superfluous shot. And now we have the famous shower scene. Well, I prefer the shower scene in Breathless where Richard Gere gave us not only a full frontal but a full rear view too. Not to mention that the organ in question was in deep shadow and could have been mistaken for the shower door handle. And, to top it off, gorgeous Rosamund Pike was right there  under the shower, her ripe curves set off by a coating of ... well, I don't want to go into too much detail here!

[Front-Ranger]

Lat night, I watched again An Education. I was charmed to notice Rosamund Pike in a supporting role. I hadn't noticed her before, I was so entranced with the lead actor, Carey Mulligan.

[Front-Ranger]

I love good movie criticism. It is usually well written. And of movie review writing, the negative ones are often the best! Check this out:
http://www.avclub.com/article/20-worst-films-2014-212689

[CellarDweller]

Has anyone seen Nightcrawler?  It's been getting a ton of great reviews.

[serious crayons]

Has anyone seen Nightcrawler?  It's been getting a ton of great reviews.

I've seen it and enjoyed it a lot! It's not a movie for people who like their Jake in cute mode. He is not cute in this. He's very convincingly creepy. And as I said somewhere else on this site, there are some plot features that I didn't buy. But it's entertaining, original, well-acted, etc.

For the record, I saw it a week after Birdman and liked it a lot better. So if you're ever deciding between the two, Nightcrawler would be my recommendation.

[CellarDweller]

I've been hearing "creepy" a lot regarding Jake's performance.  Hey, it got him a Golden Globe nomination.

[CellarDweller]

I am looking forward to the newest one Catching Fire in November, but I know a movie is disturbing to me when I get that sick feeling in my stomach.  I got that - and still get it - when I see The Hunger Games and when I think about the next installment, I get that same sense of "I want to see this...but I don't want to see this..."

Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence is hitting the pop charts now. 

In Mockingjay she sings a song that inspires the rebels, called "The Hanging Tree".

The song was released as a single, even though Lawrence was not thrilled with it, and it's managed to get to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Here is the version most radio stations are playing, with a 'pop remix' to it.



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNrBBfqWpzE[/youtube]

[oilgun]

Berlin film festival 2015: 17 key films to look out for – in pictures
 
The Berlin film festival opens for business on Thursday with a sparkling line-up, including new films from
Terrence Malick and Werner Herzog, Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes, and some obscure, little-known film
about a student journalist who interviews a rich businessman
 
 
-Dane DeHaan plays James Dean and Robert Pattinson photographer Dennis Stock in the
Anton Corbijn-directed Life, an account of the pair’s friendship
 
-Terrence Malick’s latest, Knight of Cups, a study of LA disillusion and decadence with
Christian Bale and Natalie Portman.
 
-Breathe Umphefumlo, from U-Carmen eKhayelitsha director Mark Dornford-May, a reworking
of Puccini’s opera La Bohème relocated to a South African township
 
-Ian McKellen plays Sherlock as a bee-keeping retiree in his 90s looking back over his career in
Mr Holmes. Bill ‘God and Monsters’ Condon directs.
 
-Wim Wenders hooks up with the ubiquitous James Franco for the German director’s
first fiction feature since 2008’s Palermo Shooting. Every Thing Will Be Fine is a study of
a man (Franco) who knocks down a child in his car
 
-Kenneth Branagh’s live-action Cinderella – starring Lily James as Cinders and
Cate Blanchett as the Wicked Stepmother – gets its worldwide release in March, but is
showing out of competition here
 
-German director Oliver Hirschbiegel bounces back from the Diana disaster with Elser (AKA 13 Minutes),
an account of Georg Elser, who tried to kill Hitler in 1939
 
-The latest from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has managed to complete three features
despite being banned from film-making by Iran’s authorities. Taxi has Panahi himself driving
a cab around Tehran, talking to the people he picks up
 
-The big hope of China’s commercial domestic film industry, Gone with the Bullets is the sequel
to action comedy smash Let the Bullets Fly, directed by and starring Jiang Wen as gangster in the 1920s
 
-Maverick British director Peter Greenaway examines Soviet master film-maker Sergei Eistenstein’s
abortive trip to Mexico in the 1930s in Eisenstein in Guanajuato
 
-Having made his name with the low-budget Weekend, British director Andrew Haigh scales up
with 45 Years, a study of a long-married couple with explosive secrets. Tom Courtenay and
Charlotte Rampling star
 
-Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds star in Woman in Gold, a based-on-truth study
of a Holocaust survivor and her lawyer who are fighting to reclaim a Klimt painting after it was stolen
by the Nazis. Simon Curtis directs
 
-Veteran German auteur Margarethe von Trotta returns with The Misplaced World,
a fable of a man obsessed with a woman who bears a striking resemblance to his dead wife
 
-A quick European jaunt for Sebastian Silva’s Nasty Baby, fresh from its Sundance premiere.
Kristen Wiig is a surrogate mother for a gay couple, played by Tunde Adebimpe and Silva
 
-Léa Seydoux stars in a faithful adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s turn of the century novel
Diary of a Chambermaid, previously reworked by Buñuel and Renoir among others.
Benoît Jacquot takes the reins this time
 
-The hugely anticipated adaptation of EL James S&M novel Fifty Shades of Grey gets its
world premiere in Berlin – sensibly, though, it is being screened out of competition
 
-Werner Herzog has rounded up a strong cast – James Franco, Nicole Kidman,
Robert Pattinson, Damian Lewis – for Queen of the Desert, a biopic of traveller/diplomat
Gertrude Bell, who was instrumental in the creation of Iraq in the 1920s

http://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2015/feb/03/berlin-film-festival-2015-15-key-films-to-look-out-for-in-pictures

[serious crayons]

-Kenneth Branagh’s live-action Cinderella – starring Lily James as Cinders and Cate Blanchett as the Wicked Stepmother – gets its worldwide release in March, but is showing out of competition here

Well, I guess we now know who's going to take Meryl Streep's place when Meryl graduates to Shirley Maclaine roles.

These films all sound good except one. Fifty Shades of Grey seems really out of place on this list.