Have you seen any movies recently that have pleasantly surprised you?

5 minutes form the curods

“We Bought a Zoo”

Clear History

You really can’t go wrong with Larry David, but I wasn’t sure until I watched the film. I felt like I was watching the movie version of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I loved it!

Bernie

Up

Warm bodies.

“Barrymore” with Christopher Plummer.

I really expected to hate Borat, but ended up laughing my ass off.

The Dictator. Funny What lengths would a dictator go to get his country back.

The Fabulous Mister Fox. In general I don’t watch animated films but was loaned this film and finally I watched it, it was a pleasant surprise.

Pretty Persuasion, 2005.

I’m almost always disappointed in modern movies. I don’t like sadistic shock humor, sophomoric humiliation, apparently indestructible superhuman humans plugging holes and beating on each other throughout the movie to little effect (WWF wrestlers getting extra work? Trust me, you take a bullet in the arm or leg and you won’t be crossing the city on rooftops. It’s ridiculous.), amateurish fantasy stories and flying dragons, characters imbued with magical powers to advance a plot line, vampires, vampires, and more vampires (including the obsession these directors have with explosive head shots—it’s fucking juvenile and disgusting), space aliens, blood & guts (once you’ve seen the real deal often enough—along with the screaming, shock, smell and bewilderment of people on-scene—there is no thrill in it, believe me), and sentimental story lines so sweet as to send a diabetic into shock. Remove all that from Hollywood’s annual output, and what’s left to like? I’m getting old, I guess. I like good writing and believable acting. It’s pretty simple.

A female friend brought Pretty Persuasion over on a thumb drive and we fed it through the system. In the few first minutes, I thought I’d been roped into watching some estrogen-laced, Valley Girl, coming-of-age dross and had to fight the urge to run screaming from the room. But my friend, who normally has good taste in film, urged me to keep watching and tune into the dialogue, which I had to admit was becoming mildly funny. Then came the dining room scene with James Woods as the father of the protagonist and I about died laughing. This young actress, Evan Rachel Wood was really good. Never heard of her before, but she is excellent. And James Woods was over the top as her shallow,paranoid, self-indulgent, bigoted, nutcase of a father. I started to sympathize with the intelligent daughter at this point and the plot got increasingly better. Then as the plot developed, the twists came and

Evan Rachel Wood’s character seamlessly converted from a shallow teenager with some decent qualities with slightly questionable ethics—but her heart seemed in the right place—into quite something else, quite a disturbing character. Until the end, I really didn’t know if I was watching a dark comedy, or a suspense thriller, or just a straight drama. All three, I guess. But the transitions were well done and I really liked it, especially compared with the shit fare that’s been seeping onto the screen the past few years. I’m watching for more work by this actress.

It was last year, but Pacific Rim really was way above my expectations. Took all the good action movie cliches and none of the bad ones, and managed to make a film about giant robots punching giant monsters really moving as well as fun.

Safe Haven

Watched this movie called Killdozer. This meteorite crashes on a small island where some construction is being done, and it possesses a bulldozer, which then comes to life, stalking and killing the workers. I was in for some more roadkill movies after watching Duel, and this satisfied me. Granted it’s completely lame and stupid, as compared to the finesse of Duel, but I liked it.

It was simple, with shoddy acting, but with good special effects, at least for 1974. Plus this was a remastered version, so everything looked smooth and crystal clear.

One thing I need to mention, there is ZERO gore in this. The dozer runs people over, but you don’t see guts and brains fly, never ever. Somehow, this should bother me given the idea here, but the movie was very entertaining in other ways. The dozer is always accompanied with little beep boop sounds that are classic to old space movies. (I attribute this to the ’‘life’’ controling it, which comes from space) The headlights turn on and off, like they were its eyes. Usually, when the bulldozer is in action, all you have are the beep boop sounds, its motor and all…but never any music. It achieves a peculiar effect that is both pleasant and disturbing at the same time. Sometimes its kinda cute as it goes rampaging and stalking around the island lol. It’s like aaaaaw lookit it goin mental.
Also now I know where Stephen King got his idea for Maximum Overdrive haha.

Belle and Sebastian.

@shrubbery My youngest wanted to see Pacific Rim and my wife said no way she was going so I got the short straw and took him and that movie was a ton of fun to watch. Awesome special effects and very well directed action scenes. I’d watch it again.

@shrubbery Considering it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, I was really disapointed with Pacific Rim. Seemed like it was geared towards young kids and teenagers.

Wreck It Ralph.

@Cruiser I’ve already watched it about 3 times :)
@rockfan what was there to disappoint? it’s not like he was hiding what the movie was going to be before it came out, that’s precisely why it exceeded my expectations. There are actually a lot of deeper but very subtle commentaries you can read into if you want to, or you can just take it at face value. And so what even if it was just geared towards young kids and teenagers? From the trailers it never really purported to be anything else. The only thing I didn’t like were the caricature scientists. Anyway I won’t argue opinions because that’s silly, but I personally don’t understand where your high expectations came from and why being geared towards young kids/teenagers makes it bad.

PS I love The Wild Thornberrys Movie, it’s one of the family favourites :)

@Blondesjon that one definitely pleasantly surprised me too!

“Saving Mr. Banks”

@shrubbery Guillermo del Toro usually has better acting and dialogue in his movies. Have you seen Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone?

I just saw a doozie. It’s called The Sound of My Voice starrring (and co-written by) the my new favorite actress, Brit Marling. Check it out.