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aaronhansome wrote:I checked out Room a couple weeks past and my God, the most emotionally exhausting movie I've ever seen. Absolutely fantastic. Brie Larson deserves that Oscar.

"YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!"

Oh wait, that's The Room. Something else entirely. All kidding aside, Room was a great film, and I too would be happy to see Brie Larson get the Oscar.

Today I saw Deadpool. Chock-full o' laffs, and loaded with post-modern snark. Loved it! Morena Baccarin was yummylicious, of course (now I need to go back and watch all of Firefly again), and Stan's cameo was CLASSIC.

erilaz wrote:

aaronhansome wrote:I checked out Room a couple weeks past and my God, the most emotionally exhausting movie I've ever seen. Absolutely fantastic. Brie Larson deserves that Oscar.

"YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!"

best scene ever. I mean, can't get more perfectly acted than this, boys.

Boy & the World (O Menino e o Mundo) — An animated film from Brazil with a style all its own. For its originality alone, I think it should win the Oscar for best animated feature, even though I enjoyed all of the other nominees that I've seen, which is to say, all but one (I haven't seen Anomalisa, because that style of animation kinda creeps me out).



For best animated short, I'm rooting for Don Hertzfeldt's quirky sci-fi "World of Tomorrow", which bears some similarities to his utterly deranged Simpsons couch gag. I've loved his stuff ever since I saw his hilariously twisted student film, "Ah, L'Amour", about 20 years ago.

This evening at SF Indiefest I saw Haruko's Paranormal Laboratory (春子超常現象研究所) (2015). A young woman who has wished all her life for a paranormal experience gets that and more, when, after complaining about the crap on TV one too many times, her TV set comes to life. Typically Japanese weirdness ensues.

The bit that made me laugh hardest was one of the things that Haruko watched on TV at the beginning of the film: "Kojima Yūko," wearing a pointed white hood, announced her graduation from KKK48.

I watched a bunch of movies while my computer was out of working order.

- "Big Eyes" (I like the art style more than the film itself. I liked Amy Adams in the first half, but as her character aged she lost me.)
- "Rowing with the Wind" (I dropped out of this one a little under half finished. I will never pick this up again. Boring and tedious.)
- "Belle" (I didn't like it enough to watch it again, but it was interesting. I did end it reading up on the real-life version of the main character.)
- "Crimson Peak" (Gorgeous to look at. Enjoyable enough, even with a simple story.)
- "Cinderella" (The live action. I think I might've enjoyed it more than "Maleficent". Pleasantly surprised to see Sophie McShera.)
- "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" (My sister and I watched this for the nostalgia factor. It didn't hold up to memory, but I still like certain parts of it.)

I'm sure there were others, but I can't be bothered to get up and actually look through the pile right now.

The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) — Penelope Spheeris's time capsule of the Los Angeles punk rock scene in 1979-80, and one of the greatest music documentaries ever filmed.

Saw Zootopia today. Its a great movie and has a great positive message. The theme song is very catchy. little kids in the theater were dancing to the song which was pretty funny.

I watched The Good Dinosaur last night. It's not one of Pixar's best films for sure. My favorites are Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3, and I haven't really liked anything since. The animation for The Good Dinosaur was really beautiful though. There was just nothing to the story, and the main character is extremely annoying.

The Tribe (Плем'я) (2014) –- A new student becomes acquainted with the seedy underbelly of a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf. It's a very grim, brutal film, but what's most interesting about it is its gimmick: the dialogue is entirely in sign language, with no translations of any sort.

Dragon Inn (龍門客棧) (1967) -- King Hu's wuxia classic. I watched a downloaded copy a few years ago, but it was nice to see it on the big screen at long last. I still prefer the 1992 remake, though.

Walk Don't Run (1966) -- An English industrialist (Cary Grant, in his final film), trying to find a place to stay in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics, ends up sharing an apartment with a young Englishwoman (Samantha Eggar) and an American athlete (Jim Hutton). The bits that made me laugh the most were those with the Japanese neighbors: two silent little kids and a bewildered old woman. It was cool seeing the Tokyo locations as they were fifty years ago, but I noticed that the apartment's address, "235 Osaka Road, Apartment 2A," is absolutely NOT a Japanese-style street address.