well, yes and no. I get the biblical reference, I get the sins of the fathers causing frograin, and the following catharsisesss... but I wished it would have been more... subtle... I don't know. Ok. so people behaved like idiots, everybody was either messed up or suffering the mess ups of others, or whatever.

i dont know.. it didnt do it for me.
maybe i'm just dumb that way.

Apparently it actually does rain frogs in some parts of Mexico...a storm will sweep up hundreds of frogs from the bogs and lakes and deposit them in other places.
If you remember the first five minutes of the film is recounting various coincidences of "freak accidents". Thats another big clue I believe.

Wow...this is all kind of hard to remember. I used to have a pretty solid philosophy on the issue, but I havent seen it in awhil

Im not really a huge fan of Magnolia either. It was a little refreshing though. I probably should watch it again...

I just saw Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and have to say that ranks as one of the dumbest films I've ever seen. Probably a lot of people will disagree with me on this one, and I would be really surprised if people did agree with me considering the film is considered a classic and the reason I decided to watch it... but The Shining just doesn't do it for me. The characters were laughably bad and very little of it was actually scarey. Kubrick is still a great director though, I just think he dropped the ball with this film.

I love the cinematography and editing in The Shining...can't say so much for the other aspects of it.
The book is amazing though.

yeah.. i'm just starting to read it again (while I wait for Blaze)

When it comes to Kubrick's later works, The Shining is definitely my least favorite - that's not to say I necessarily disliked it though. As braininabox said, the technical aspect were incredible, but that's just par for the course with Kubrick. Jack Nicholson's performance was awesome I thought, but God... I seriously could've done without that god awful still of his face at the end. Where's the subtlety Stanley?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: politicsofecstacy,

Yeah, I agree the cinematography is great. I couldn't get past the story and characters, the worst being "Olive Oil" and the way she screamed, cried, and screamed and cried some more thropugh the film.

Just remembered another: The Shawshank Redemption.

I kept reading how great of a film this was. Saw how high it was in IMDB, saw how many people listed it as their favorite film, etc..

When I finally watched it...I wasn't blown away. It was a good film, but it wasn't THAT good. Honestly, #2 on IMDB. What??

I probably fell victim to the built-up-hype-letdown problem. I should just always avoid all opinions of a film until I watch it. That'd be smart.

Could be what happened, but imho, Shawshank is amazing despite expectations. Tim Robbins is brilliant in his part, the rest of the cast as well. It's not so much the story that made it great, but the interplay between the characters, on the main "what makes a man" subject. Tim Robbin's character getting beers for the men working on the roof... The inmake who likes Hank Williams and says "alexandree Dummass"... It also works so well cause we have the benefit of Morgan Freeman character's insights guiding us through it all.

I saw Shawshank at the theater, and it's one of my favorite movies.

Last night, maybe the opposite happened to me.
I went to the movies to watch Trust the Man (2005). (sometimes movies take a while to get here).

I checked the reviews on imdb, rotten tomatoes, and yahoo movies... all very mediocre... we went anyways with nothing else going on, and I warned about it being an "ok movie, but nothing memorable. Could be kinda bad"

Well, we all loved it. Very funny movie. Not memorable, not a DVD buy, but a definite great time at the theater.

Off the main subject, I know, but, relevant to the last post.

Oh, about the subject, I read posts about City of God here. I'm from Brazil, and I can tell you the slums are like that here. Crminality is as common as breathing. So it's not a Pulp Fiction in South America at all. There were no "characters". No cool people with great one-liners. It's pure portrayal of an existing situation. And it may not be an amazing work of art, but it's also not a Pulp Fiction movie.

I loved Shawshank Redemption but I definitely don't see it as one of the top films of all time. IMDB's top 250 is way out of whack in my opinion. I'll admit, I'm kind of addicted to the site though.