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A welcome return to Wes Anderdon’s human side after a couple of hyper-meta puzzle boxes.

I didn’t know it would be so funny. Loved every single character, both memorable and perfectly believable. One of the finest goon squads in cinema history.

A cartoon fever dream - another Bong rip from the master

The first shots of this movie are a bunch of hunky cowboys lining up to shoot their guns over and over, and it just keeps going like that for two hours.

Had no idea this was a real historical series of events until I was googling afterward. Fascinating wild west lore totally rotting on the vine, but that’s okay. It’s for teens.

今は今

Ima wa ima, baby! Love me a live in the moment movie. Beautiful slow burn low stakes movie about just living life and appreciating every facet of it. Every choice he makes is his own and that’s beautiful.

Giving these another shot because SIR Peter Jackson has earned it. Better than I ed, though still weirdly flawed.

These are my notes on the trilogy as a whole.

PROS
- Casting, esp. Martin Freeman as Bilbo and Ken Stott as Balin. Bonus points for Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug, why not.
- Giving the dwarves better motivation of restoring their homeland as opposed to just wanting the gold.
- Echoing the themes of home/a place to belong throughout the trilogy.
- Highlighting the destructive power of greed and material wealth in not just the dwarves but the elves, goblins, and humans as well.
- Misty Mountains Cold - Absolute Banger
- Making Bilbo more cunning/active in the story (see: Trolls sequence)
- Continuing the transcendent scenery, production design, score, and overall magical feel of Jackson's Tolkienverse.
- Using the new trilogy to include material from more of Tolkien's stories, fostering more interest in works beyond Hobbit/LOTR
- At least taking a stab at Radagast the Brown
- Making Dwarves more than the comic relief Gimli was (while still respecting the massive comic potential of dwarves.)
- Most believable portrayal of Dragon Sickness/Gold Fever since Treasure of the Sierra Madre

CONS
- Jarring tonal mismatch to the novel
- Missing the opportunity to show the elves from the book, who party and get drunk and tell jokes and aren't all such ethereal sticks in the mud. The dwarves partied with the elves for a MONTH in the books, damn it.
- occasional "risque" jokes that feel out of place
- several instances of weak CGI that takes you right out of the film
- I'm looking at you, orcs. Also Radagast's rabbit sled.
- shoehorning in dwarf/elf romance plot because Thorin is too dour to lay pipe in a manner anyone wants to see
- Shoehorning in Legolas (even if he kind of makes sense)
- Most of the other songs kind of suck (this is Tolkien's fault.)
- Feeling like they were pressued to make another LOTR trilogy after the success of the first, especially with scenes like Gandalf/Radagast/Galadrieel/Saruman super-friends fight sequence against the Nazgul

Impossible to make a sequel as good as Yojimbo but damn it he tried.

Lot more focus on the nature of Mr. Mulberry Field (unsheathed blade that he is) and a shift from the politics of the yakuza to the politics of the ruling class.

My one complaint about this movie is that the samurai he helps are frustratingly honourable (naïve/oblivious), and some of their mistakes too painful to to watch. I assume this is a culture gap (what do I know of feudal bushido after all) but boy oh boy does it sometimes feel they're being deliberately written this stupid to manufacture obstacles.

That Ally Sheedy makeover cost you half a star Mr Hughes.

David Lynch is in the white lodge

The only movie I’ve ever seen truly sell the FUN of DnD and what it’s like to play the game, beyond the usual tropes of nerds/dragons/etc.

Also a solid comic fantasy adventure movie in its own right beyond being a “DnD property” full of wild set pieces. Did not see that ‘fat dragon’ sequence coming.

Watching this makes it seem amazing that the police manage to send anyone to prison at all.

Can’t think of this movie without picturing patrick stewart charging into battle holding a pug

Imagine you’re a Marvel exec, about to do an entire movie phase around the multiverse concept, and these guys hit a multiverse home run just as your own multiverse becomes a fractured overstretched mess. I’d be steamin’

This was great, why were people so mad

The new Poirots are solid, but they play like action/thrillers. I prefer the long shots and naturalistic feel of the Ustinov Poirots. Maybe it is because everything feels more grounded and realistic that these films have more emotional weight - both suspects and victims feel like real people.

Throws out the ambiguity and nuance of Jackson's masterpiece to instead make a by-the-books predictable Hollywood haunted house. What if instead of subtle character that questions how people as well as places can be haunted, we had an orphan-murdering tycoon ghost swooping around?

Another movie studio/producer noted to death. It kills me that this turd brought in $100M in profit at the box office.

Underrated, even by me

Giving Coraline that dumb boy-next-door chum with a motorbike feels like the worst kind of producer note.

I often wish Canada had more weird, goofy, slightly trashy movies like this under our belt. Starring the cast of SCTV and featuring one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.

I saw this on a date at 16, and when I got home my family was all out and the tv in the basement had been left to static. I threw a blanket over it from the side and sat upstairs with the lights on until they came home.

A rare case of the American remake improving on the foreign original.

Needed another 30 minutes

how does one look at a priest in any religion and not see the biggest dork in the world

What if people were more dangerous than the zombies, as usual. Still, great.

best script I’ve ever read

Deepy tragic, deeply sad, and deeply uncomfortable viewing of a mentally ill person in self-destructive freefall. Shades of Observe and Report, though more empathy for the protagonist.

zuckerberg must be so happy now elon is the world's most annoying tech bro

We had a short lived “epic movie night” in my friend group. This was my movie pick.

The night we watched it our host left motion smoothing on their TV. I asked if we could change it, they said it was fine and left it. We watched the whole thing like that, me gritting my teeth. Looked like it was shot to be a tv soap opera. I think of that day often.

Anyway, terrific yearning, unfulfilled love story, my favourite kind.

I sort of succumbed

Sets up a lot but uses every single part of the beaver. Fun, imaginative, one of a kind.

Oz is cool again

SNL but it’s an ep of West Wing. JK Simmons is brilliant doing his shitty little Milton Berle comedy sketch and that scene tells you everything you need to know about why SNL mattered.

what I wouldn’t give for one chaotic night on the run with Peter Falk

An A movie tethered to a B movie

really need to get around to reading “Meditations” one of these days

what if you fell in love so hard you spent the rest of your life yearning for one true love that may have never existed in the first place

Whether you think think this is beautifully tragic or beautifully romantic (the right call) this is the movie for yoi

In the first Beetlejuice, you can tell there is a moment where Burton *really* wanted the saturnian sandsnake to chase the heroes back inside their house but it just didn’t play. Well, Tim went back, sunk a bunch of money and FX into it, and he finally made it work. Glad you made it happen my man.

I will watch literally anything Michael Keaton does, but the script could have used another . Lot of loose ends and squandered ideas and for some reason MacArthur Park? Also Tim really loved Dafoe’s improv more than the audience did.

Incredibly good job of keeping a complicated idea clear and simple, while balancing the grotesque body horror with grotesque body humour. 

Think it was about society valuing women in a superficial/shallow way? Not sure, they never bothered to really hammer the point home a million times. Blink and you’ll miss it theme.

The guy who yellowed out “Hail Poseideon!” instead of ‘Neptune’ during the gladiator naval battle was obviously visiting from Greece, and I don’t care that they didn’t really use sharks. Was still a blast.

Charming but dated. Weirdness of a widower tossing aside her friend-zones boyfriend for a random shopkeeper is thankfully balanced by the incredible kindness and gentlemanly behaviour of both her suitors. Somehow feels like everyone is going to stay pals at the end.

Newest addition to my Christmas canon. Accomplishes the impossible task of making miracles seem not only possible, but plausible. 

One of those flicks where every piece, every line of dialogue seems to pay off, and somehow winds themes of faith, family and forgiveness together for a magical Christmas in a country that barely celebrates it.

Possibly the best suicide movie of all time

A nice and surprisingly unusual mid-budget comedy that feels like a low-budget comedy with an incredible cast. I was not expecting to see Matthew Broderick in this, but I was delighted.

It's an interesting story, a new take on a May/July romance with the woman as the weird creep for a change. JLaw sells a rather grotesque, and her friendship with Feldman felt believable. Feldman, for his part, rapidly increases in likability and charm as the film goes on.

But there are some scenes and dialogue that don't quite feel like they translated from script to screen. Odd little moments that take you out of the story. Sometimes it feels like they needed an extra take, sometimes it feels like a joke that is better written than said, and sometimes it's just a total dearth of chemistry between some of the actors. The nanny and adoption centre supervisor characters feel inessential to the story, or like other scenes of theirs were cut.

There's a few great set-pieces, in particular the now infamous beach fight scene which is surprising and incredible, and *truly* felt like something I had never seen before. Kudos to JLaw for kicking so much ass.

100 minutes of genius gags/design/acting/filmmaking/snappy social commentary capped off with 20 minutes of speeches.

just some silly boys having a grand old time

Like Napoleon, I have been exiled to a small tropical island for nearly conquering Europe. The Pope, in his mercy, has arranged for me to take 100 movies with me to while away the hours.

These… are those movies.

• Alien
• Amadeus
• Annie Hall
• Best in Show
• The Big Lebowski
• Blade Runner
• The Blues Brothers
• The Breakfast Club
• Bridget Jones's Diary
• Casablanca

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.