I'd like to get some good mystery movie recommendations from the 80s on.
It's OK if they veer toward the thriller, like
Michael Clayton, ridiculous like
Ford Fairlaine, noirish like
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, or are a more standard outing with a strong, interesting, well developed detective lead like
Zero Effect. Drawing room mysteries totally A-OK too. Super bonus points if I can stream them now on Hulu plus or Netflix.
posted by jsturgill
on May 16, 2013 -
25 answers
Quentin Tarantino, in an interview, said something along the lines of, "The medium that I work in is the audience's emotions." I think that the interview was relatively recent, either about Inglourious Basterds or Django, and it may even have been referenced on Metafilter, but now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it.
So, did he actually say something to this effect? If yes, where did he say it and what was the actual statement?
posted by frimble
on May 10, 2013 -
3 answers
I'm going to be producing a low-budget feature film, and hopefully more in the future. I'm considering setting up a company via LegalZoom or similar and just want to know if there are any "gotcha"s before I start.
[more inside]
posted by drjimmy11
on May 10, 2013 -
11 answers
I just heard a radio interview with Zach Braff about his Kickstarter film project. It was mentioned that it is illegal for him to share the film's profits with his Kickstarter backers. Why is that?
posted by donajo
on May 4, 2013 -
3 answers
A friend of mine is trying to remember the name of a documentary they once saw and Google has failed them. I'm forever touting the skill and speed with which the AskMe community solves dilemmas like these, so don't fail me now! Here's what she asked me:
I saw a documentary about a man who was representing himself in a lawsuit or series of lawsuits -- I think the government had filed them against him for sending threatening letters. Something about defending his land and eminent domain... He had a wife that he met in a foreign country. She was a lot younger than him and she moved to the US and married him. They were both chain smokers and used a plastic fork as a cigarette holder. They lived in a trailer that was a mess and full of document boxes of his "research" for his case. And they had a few big dogs.
posted by ErWenn
on May 1, 2013 -
2 answers
What is the significance of the unhappy couple (wife is hospitalized) midway in the movie Upstream Color?
posted by mnemonic
on Apr 25, 2013 -
2 answers
I once watched a Japanese movie on a flight but can't for the life of me remember its name. It is about a mysterious Chinese investor trying a hostile takeover of a large Japanese car maker. A retired legend of the Japanese car industry is brought back from retirement to try and save the company from being sold to the Chinese dude.
posted by dcrocha
on Apr 15, 2013 -
4 answers
One night in Atlantic City, me and three other drunk, high, exhausted bachelor party gamblers went to our hotel room and ended up watching a program that may have just been some sort of shared fever dream. It was also in Spanish.
[more inside]
posted by Potloaf
on Apr 13, 2013 -
0 answers
I'm trying to think of a movie where a man is having an affair with another woman. During one of the encounters while he should be watching his child, the child accidentally dies I think by falling into a pool. After feeling grieved, he goes through some sort of cave in a park and goes back in time and can make things right again. Apparently, there's something weird about the new neighborhood he's in (spoilers so I won't say more).
Anybody know what the movie is called?!
posted by jamnbread
on Apr 13, 2013 -
2 answers
I saw a trailer a while (1,2 years?) ago. The plot had something to do with either a company or research project that had gone wrong. Genetically messed-up creatures and people were roaming around inside an office block. In the trailer, a guy is at the photocopier, and a large, human-faced spider thingy creeps up behind him.
[more inside]
posted by flutable
on Apr 5, 2013 -
9 answers
Sometimes in a novel, you will have Character A and Character B. Fast forward to the big twist that Character A and Character B ARE THE SAME PERSON!
Obviously this doesn't work when the novel is adapted for the screen, and I'm looking for examples of adaptations that had to deal with this, and how they dealt with it, and any sort of critique of how it was dealt with in the movie/television show. (Spoilers of all sorts inside)
[more inside]
posted by Lucinda
on Apr 4, 2013 -
25 answers
A see people use a harness to hold the camera to eliminate jerking, up and down sideways
Is there a way to get the same effect on a smaller budget? Or an inexpensive
harness for a rather smallish light weight camera.
Making special effects, like a robot walking around would add amusement to the deal.
I have a program called FxGuru on my phone, which can add some limited special effects
and I like that. But I would like just a little bit more control.
[more inside]
posted by digividal
on Apr 1, 2013 -
10 answers
The other day I was watching the movie and like the font. First I thought it's TNR then I thought maybe some Sans but I couldn't figure out.
I loved the clean spacious fonts. Which one was it?
[more inside]
posted by amar
on Mar 29, 2013 -
3 answers
Looking for movies with a classic graduate cap toss: the speech is over, the plot comes to a pleasing conclusion, and then everybody, preferably the whole school, takes their hats off and tosses them in the air, in slo-mo. The sky is blue, it's a stock photography moment. What are movies or TV shows with this oh-so-cliche scene?
posted by saysthis
on Mar 24, 2013 -
15 answers
Hazy recollections: A group of young adults move into a snowbound cabin as part of an experimental reality television show. They come to realize that sicko voyeurs are betting on who will die next or who the last survivor will be.
[more inside]
posted by 99percentfake
on Mar 23, 2013 -
5 answers
I'll be shooting a feature film in L.A. later this year, and I need some advice about how to handle the business side. I'm hoping that somewhere there's some sort of low-budget service that provides help to people who are new to the process.
[more inside]
posted by drjimmy11
on Mar 21, 2013 -
4 answers
We're shooting a low-budget feature and are having trouble finding a cinematographer/DP. Where else can we look (details inside)?
[more inside]
posted by drjimmy11
on Mar 12, 2013 -
7 answers
I really like the painting that hangs over Steve Carrell's couch in "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World". (screenshot
here).
Does anyone know anything about it, or where I might find it?
posted by namewithoutwords
on Mar 9, 2013 -
6 answers
Sci-Fi movie identification halp. Watched a movie when I was a kid that I thought was Futureworld, viewed Futureworld recently, beginning and ending are totally different. And yet certain things/scenes meshed. Am I imagining things? Maybe meshing two different films?
[more inside]
posted by disconnect
on Mar 6, 2013 -
11 answers
Asking for a friend (honest!). Movie plot centers around a young couple living in a NYC apartment building who suspect that their young male neighbor is a terrorist (suspicious items delivered, etc.). At the end, their suspicion turns out to be true. Ring any bells, friends?
posted by Lornalulu
on Mar 2, 2013 -
7 answers
OK, guys, Jurassic Park is being re-released on IMAX 3D for ONE WEEK in April, and if I don't see it I will just die of sadness forever. It doesn't appear to be playing anywhere near me, and I live in Chicago, which should have everything, and I'm a-skeerd that I won't get to see it at all.
[more inside]
posted by phunniemee
on Mar 1, 2013 -
17 answers
On a recent rewatch of the original Alien and Aliens films, I realized something puzzling.
[more inside]
posted by orrnyereg
on Feb 23, 2013 -
11 answers
There was a movie that came out last fall that we spaced about and missed during its theater run. We want to pay to see it now to support movies of this type and by this filmmaker. Within reason, what is the
best way to do it?
[more inside]
posted by getawaysticks
on Feb 21, 2013 -
7 answers
This movie is a straight-to-VHS, released pre-1990, and features live-action reenactments of nursery rhymes with occasional use of illustrations for the more animal-based rhymes (though I do remember Humpty Dumpty being portrayed in live-action).
[more inside]
posted by itchie
on Feb 17, 2013 -
5 answers
Help me find non-boring media that wraps you in a warm (or fierce) blanket of compassion or simply leaves you with a sense of gentle warmth, safety, or contentment?
[more inside]
posted by zeek321
on Feb 15, 2013 -
57 answers
I was watching this film on my previous laptop via TV-Tuner card and right then my laptop had crashed. I didn't check channel name and newspaper for the film name at the time, and now I can't remember it. It was at least before May 2010(I was watching the film in college and this when I left college - jic it helps though I am not sure if the film released recently at the time)... It was a train scene in the wilderness.
[more inside]
posted by amar
on Feb 12, 2013 -
10 answers
Writing a script, need a few believable, throwaway lines for a character. A guy running a TGI.Friday's-like bar praises his bartender, a math genius, for giving him an idea that saves money and improves the business overall. An example of outside-of-the-box thinking that enforces that our math-genius-in-disguise really is a genius. Bonus points if the idea skirts the line of legality -- something funky with accounting, maybe?
[more inside]
posted by Cool Papa Bell
on Feb 9, 2013 -
22 answers
I like movies that mostly reflect reality (er...let's say
enhanced reality) but have a pop of wtf-was-that. Like
the square that Mia draws in Pulp Fiction.
[more inside]
posted by phunniemee
on Feb 5, 2013 -
90 answers
Looking for sarcastic, clever, witty characters like Winona Ryder's in "Beetlejuice" or "Heathers", or Parker Posey's in "Kicking and Screaming"* (the Noah Baumbach film, not the one with Will Ferrell), films made around 2000-2013.
Ideally there will be YouTube clips for the best scenes.
[more inside]
posted by 4midori
on Feb 3, 2013 -
11 answers
Please recommend movies that view coherently with the sound off. The example that I offer is 'Cast Away,' which, even during the book-ends of its series of scenes that have dialogue, every last minute point of film's exposition is conveyed through blocking, apparent emotions, and, obviously, action.
[more inside]
posted by herbplarfegan
on Jan 30, 2013 -
50 answers
Movie theaters seem to only post show times on their websites for Friday-Thursday on Friday which makes it difficult to make advance plans for Friday night. Is there some other website/service that posts the times earlier? (I vaguely remember finding some site that did that, but I can't find it now). Also, why do theaters do things this way?
[more inside]
posted by bluefly
on Jan 28, 2013 -
14 answers
The standard format for a romantic comedy has both key characters introduced very early in the script/movie -- say, in the first ten pages/minutes. I'm looking for examples of romantic comedies where one of the romantic leads is introduced later in the movie.
[more inside]
posted by allnamesaretaken
on Jan 22, 2013 -
38 answers
I feel like I should be able to find the translation with Google, but it is proving more difficult than expected. I would love to know what they were saying in the Vietnamese parts of this
movie.
posted by monkeys with typewriters
on Jan 21, 2013 -
2 answers
The movie was released in the late 1990's early 2000's. It's a movie set in LA in the 70's or 80's. There's a murder (or beating?) at a nice house over a drug deal.
[more inside]
posted by roboton666
on Jan 17, 2013 -
8 answers
I remember watching a movie that was made in either the late 80s or early 90s which was set in a mental institution (or possibly rehab facility?). What was it?
[more inside]
posted by cheerwine
on Jan 15, 2013 -
9 answers
There's a character in the 1955 movie "French Cancan" who wears a very fancy uniform. He wears a light blue double-breasted jacket with white braid and bright red pants with stripes on the sides. I think it is some kind of old fashioned military dress uniform. You can see the outfit
0.26 seconds into the trailer (warning:there are 26 seconds of cancan dancing first). My question is:
(1) What sort of uniform was this? Or is it just a costume they made up for the movie?
(2) Where/how could a modern person most affordably get a similar outfit of sufficiently good quality to wear around town at fancy occasions that are not Halloween?
posted by steinwald
on Jan 13, 2013 -
9 answers
I'm pretty sure this was a movie, a woman is in an interrogation room with two way glass. Whoever is questioning her gives her a quarter and says to call someone who cares. He leaves the room, she smashes the edge to make a sharp bit, traces a circle on the two way glass and punches through.
[more inside]
posted by abitha!
on Jan 11, 2013 -
3 answers
Probably extremely easy movie identification question: A genie or something similar tells a kid to hold on to all the toys and collectibles of his youth (rather than leaving home and getting a job). The child as an adult is extremely poor and speaks to the same genie, angry for receiving such poor advice. The adult later sells his collection, becoming extremely rich and bringing delight to the community with his nostalgic toys.
[more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus
on Jan 4, 2013 -
4 answers
Another "what movie was this?" question: a fantasy/horror film set at least partially in a castle, where the villain deliberately rips his own face off.
[more inside]
posted by johnofjack
on Jan 1, 2013 -
5 answers
Name that science fiction story / movie: Two people in love with each other are trapped in a box. The box is possibly in some alternative dimension with a Panopticon-type God person. I think the story was written by a famous sci fi author.
[more inside]
posted by Apropos of Something
on Dec 30, 2012 -
3 answers
Can you help me identify the following film from my mother's description. It's so I can buy it for her partner's Christmas present. She said 'P loves that corny film about someone trying to get home for christmas'. What film is she thinking of?
posted by plonkee
on Dec 13, 2012 -
15 answers
