Best movie you have seen this year (12/18)

Wasn't "Hard Candy" an '05 movie? It was great, though. "Misery" ratcheted up another level in terms of creepiness.

Not sure they knew how to end it, though, thus the contrived appearance of his first love, etc., etc. Very plot devicey.

Realistically, I think the little girl would have felt in over her head and either taken off at some point or done something really stupid like kill the guy.

 

Only saw four on the list, but liked 'em all.
1. Little Miss Sunshine - fully realized. What a ride!
2. Borat - I still haven't washed off the sleaze, and my ribs still hurt.
3. United 93 - as the late Spalding Gray would say, it kept me so glued to my seat I couldn't get up to pee.
4. Thank You for Smoking - Even if Aaron Eckart should've gotten the GG nomination for "In the Company of Men" a few years ago.
As for "Hostel," thank God I saw it in time to prepare me for watching the "Last House on the Left" DVD the other night. Creee-py!

 

I counted 423 laughs during Borat. Nothing else comes close.

My wife is dead ... High Five!

 

I liked Borat - a lot - but mostly because it introduced the world at large to something I had known about for a couple of years already. I had been trying to spread the Ali G. gospel for a while, and was usually brushed off.

"British comedian? OK ... I'll, um, rent it or something some time." [/person returns to watching Seinfeld repeats]

The first time I watched Ali G. was like a watershed moment in comedy for me. Thinking of this line - "Why do Jesus fly around with all them reindeer?" - still makes me smile at the memory of seeing it for the first time.

I'd seen all the Borat gags before - "High five!" "Very nice!" etc., etc. - but it was a delight hearing Cohen virgins cracking up in the movie theater.

Hope he invents some new characters - perhaps a handicapped person or a really elderly person.

 

Bruno is by far third best of his characters.

Ali G to Beckham about anal sex: "You tellin me, Becks, you never been caught offside?"

 

Bet you never saw the hotel fight scene before.

 

For my wife and I it's been more of a financial thing. When I was single, it didn't seem like such an undertaking to go to a movie. But now, for the two of us, between ticket prices and concessions for two, you're looking at $25-30. That's a pretty good amount of money.

 

... that said, almost forgot to chime in the damn poll. Borat's the best comedy of the year, without question. "He's the town rapist!"

I really enjoyed The Departed and Thank You for Smoking quite a bit. I also liked Casino Royale a lot more than any Bond movie I've seen in a long time. Oddly, it definitely belongs on the list. Of course, this is all pending a Blood Diamond viewing.

 

I saw two movies in the theatre this year, so my list goes:

1. The Departed
2. Clerks 2

 

I've seen just about everything useful and worth seeing, and Babel still wins it. I am surprised, given its relative obscurity, that the Golden Globes, of all the awards ceremonies, rewarded it so richly.

Brad Pitt does a nice job. Has to shift emotional gears a couple times, and he does so. But really the movie belongs to the Japanese girl, Rinko Kukuchi. Her character is involved in the most exhilirating three minutes of film for me since the opera sequence in Birth, even if rips off a similiar scene from Morvern Callar.

I mean it when I say Apocalypto is up there for me. It's a "holy shit!" kind of picture, sheer viscera, balls and cornball sentiment pushed the max of historical, anthropological and physical credulity. How many movies use every kind of deadly creature in a rain forest, quicksand, waterfalls and blow darts while managing to draw a reasonable parallel to the Holocaust? I dunno. I'm the person who loved King Kong last year, though.

The Good Shepherd is actually pretty on point and engrossing, but Angelina Jolie is miscast. She did it to herself, but she is unable to channel a sense of normalcy at this point, and her role requires it. Nice cameo by Joe Pesci.

Dreamgirls...eh. A lot like Memoirs of a Geisha, a lush, fun little girlfight escapist pic, was unfairly buried under its negative press last year, Dreamgirls has been too built up.

Blood Diamond? Political action flick. Pretty good but too long, and trying too hard. Long on plot, short on context.

 

Well, you're twice as prolific as me then.

1.) "Devil Wears Prada" (dragged to it by my wife after I spent all of July 4th playing softball at a picnic)

Though I think we're going to the movies on Christmas night. I'm hoping for "We Are Marshall," she's angling for "Dreamgirls." Either way, whatever we see will surely be among my two favorite movies of the year.

Moviegoing is so low on my list of things to do now that I didn't even see "Clerks 2," which is only the sequel to one of my five favorite movies of all-time. If I don't see "The Simpsons" movie on opening night next year, I may never go to the movies again.