Haven't updated this thread in a while.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
The Boondock Saints
The Dictator
Yes Man
Full Metal Jacket
Evil Dead II
Army Of Darkness
I Sell The Dead
Warm Bodies
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Observe and Report
An American Werewolf in London
Man of Steel
Bicentennial Man
Bachelorette
End Of Watch
Rubber
God Bless America
The Mist
Gran Torino
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (American)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End
The Greatest Movie Ever Rolled
Silver Linings Playbook
Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki
Into the Forest of Fireflies' Light
Cloud Atlas
Pretty much the only one I want to talk about. And mostly how it compares to the book. Some minor spoilers.
I just finished reading the book after many many months. Would read a couple pages here and a few more there and then put it down for weeks at a time. Really wouldn't call it an enjoyable read. Pretty much only finished it because there was the movie to watch at the end. And there were some pretty interesting visuals described in the book I wanted to see.
I must say, might be one of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book. The book would be enjoyable if you're a writer or an English major perhaps. The author completely changes the writing styles between the different passages which is pretty impressive, though reading the far future story completely in the manner they speak in the movie was a huge pain.
But there is really nothing connecting the stories in the book other than the fact that one of the characters was actually previously reading the chapter you as the reader also just finished. So they share the same frustration you have about having to wait to read the conclusion. And that birthmark...which is on different people than in the movie. I think that was my biggest problem. It was like a collection of short stories with each split down the middle. Once you finally get going and start to enjoy one it's over for quite some time.
The movie ties everything together so much more neatly and is far more entertaining jumping between each bit. The book in comparison splits each up into two. So it starts with the earliest story on the boat and at the halfway point it cuts to the composer and in the middle of that cuts to Luisa's story and so on. And then after the far far future which is the only one that's a whole, it starts going back in time to finish the second half of each ending on the boat story.
The book is almost devoid of the reincarnation aspect (aside for a couple characters having the birthmark) so it was quite cool to track everyone's progression in the film. I really liked that. A much happier ending as well. And felt more like an ending than the book's. The film just made more sense being one piece of work. Eh, maybe if I read the book in one go I would have picked up on more things connecting with each other. Oh yeah, and thought it strange that Tom Hanks was playing a character who in the book was a kid but again makes much more sense with how the movie is set up.
The only downside was the makeup. More miss than hit. And while most of the changes made from the book made it a tighter story, I'm quite sad about the bits left out from the Soonmi story. There were some really cool fabricants in the book which were made for special tasks so they looked far from human. And there was a whole slew of other cool looking stuff I really wanted to see in the film that they apparently left out in favor of more gun play.
