Movies you've just watched

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

lots of good arguments but nothing that adresses the stinkers that are Titanic and Avatar

that is some impressive stuff, no doubt. nobody here doubts his earlier work, though. also, his writing is shitty, and the action scenes in Avatar were just nothing special, primarily because the CGI was painfully obvious (still have no idea why everyone was gushing about the amazing FX. everything looked either sterile or completely unconvincing). Peter Jackson, on the other hand...

Spoiler

apart from everything that came after the LotR trilogy, that is...

[soprano1]

I wish Peter Jackson could do another gore movie like Dead Alive.

[drauch]

I wish Peter Jackson could do another good movie, period.

[z0mbie90]

I wish Peter Jackson could do another gore movie like Dead Alive.

One could wish, but it will sadly never going to happen.

I wish Peter Jackson could do another good movie, period.

Whats he up to?, planning another Lord of the Rings movie?

[BrianC]

Whats he up to?, planning another Lord of the Rings movie?

Telling from imdb he's working on a WWI documentary and a new Tintin movie.

[Sinful]

Peter Jackson action scenes, seriously. The one thing I wish the Tolkien movies by him didn't have. Pure blank out moments and best examples of blanking out moments off the top of my head. If those movies had all those endless spectacle battles going on forever replaced with more actual and meaningful content from the books, they would have been so much better.

And yes, I've recently watched these movies like a month or two ago, so am well refreshed on them. Though could only stand to watch the first two from each Trilogy thus far. ... What can I say, they would have been so much better if James Cameron directed them.

[charlie chong]

Y'all are talking like Pirahna II isn't something to be proud of. Flying pirahna? It's so mad it's brilliant.

dat flying sound still gives me the creeps i still watched it twice

[BrianC]

Peter Jackson action scenes, seriously. The one thing I wish the Tolkien movies by him didn't have. Pure blank out moments and best examples of blanking out moments off the top of my head. If those movies had all those endless spectacle battles going on forever replaced with more actual and meaningful content from the books, they would have been so much better.

Especially with The Hobbit, which was shorter than just one of the Lord of the Rings books, but was made into three movies.

[Sinful]

Not just that, but all extra scenes not in the book (such as Orlando Bloom and that female Elf, Orcs following subplot, etc) were horrible. But alas, money talks. Splitting the costs across 3 movies instead of 2 saved them a lot of cash, not to mention a lot more earned at the box office too. Only did they really have to be like 3 hours each.

Having said that, outside of the story being worse in the new Hobbit Trilogy, I like everything else about it better then TLotR Trilogy. Just find too many actors and their captured acting performances in TLotR very cringe VS some pretty cool actors and their captured performances on The Hobbit. The visuals and set pieces look much better and more other worldly fantasy like too compared to TLotR which looks too much like it takes place on Earth instead of Middle Earth (new digital film technology over analog helped with distancing it from our reality too).

[GaijinPunch]

Having said that, outside of the story being worse in the new Hobbit Trilogy, I like everything else about it better then TLotR Trilogy.

The Hobbit sucked.

[EmperorIng]

Y'all are talking like Pirahna II isn't something to be proud of. Flying pirahna? It's so mad it's brilliant.

dat flying sound still gives me the creeps i still watched it twice

You guys are reminding me how Sony just within the last few months killed Scream Factory's planned collector's ed. blu ray of Pirahna II*. I guess they'd rather let the movie rot on the shelf than let people watch it... in glorious HD!

*one of the cases where people didn't quite know who had the rights until some lawyers who must have smelled blood in the water... not unlike the brutish fish themselves.

[neorichieb1971]

Is Piranha 2 the one with David Hasslehoff? That movie was so stupid.

[drauch]

You're thinking of Piranha 3DD, which is a comedy film and a sequel to Piranha 3D. Piranha II is a sequel to the '78 film. Nature run amok stuff.

The Hobbit is fucking horrendous in every way possible.

[Xyga]

The first two Hobbit movies have gorgeous CGI landcapes, just need to forget you're watching movies.

No in fact The Hobbit trilogy can totally wow you if you think how much it cost to produce (stick a reminder on the screen while watching)

Peter Jackson is a real motherfucker.

[Squire Grooktook]

This Christmas Holiday, I was invited to watch Hobbit trilogy and LOTR back to back.

Second viewing of LOTR, first on Hobbit.

I pretended to enjoy Hobbit for the sake of family, but hoooooooly fuuuuuuuuuuck

If you ever needed proof that Hollywood has truly gone down the fucking drain, watch both trilogies back to back, as exhausting as it is.

It's jaw dropping to go from endless tone deaf, tensionless, over the top CGI wankery in the Hobbit Trilogy where the supposedly timid protagonists fight like superheroes...and then boot up Fellowship and witness how comparatively tight and restrained the Nazgul sequences were handled in comparison.

Not that I think the original LOTR film trilogy is a masterpiece by any means, but it feels like one if you come to it directly after Hobbit.

Actually a second viewing improved my opinion of the original trilogy a bit. I feel that in order to completely enjoy it, you have to be in this weird middleground where you can forgive its flaws as a movie because it's an adaption of a monumental work...but you also have to be forgiving of it as an adaption that occasionally makes incredibly strange choices in how it interprets and changes the source material.

I don't think they're either truly great films or truly great adaptations basically, but there's enough heart in there that I can enjoy them.

[Zen]

The Hobbit (all three) felt like a cringey tv derivative.
Dreadful in pretty much all respects.

I remember being confused as to what Peter Jackson was trying to accomplish, on watching the first one.
I think his testy responses to fans concerns re. the High Frame Rate, was indicative of the sea change that lay ahead.

The best way I could describe how The Hobbit felt to me, was like this is one horrible step closer to "Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings - the Musical"

[charlie chong]

i love braindead and bad taste but no way could i sit through 9hrs of wizrds and orks n shit .life is too short

[GaijinPunch]

[quote="Squire Grooktook" watch both trilogies back to back, as exhausting as it is.[/quote]

That's pretty nuts, although I did watch the original trilogy extended versions back to back in a theater... with breaks it was about 13 hours. Amazing, but quite tiring.

It took me well over a year to watch the third hobbit, and I mainly did it just for fucks. Man he screwed that up.

So, on that note, are the books worth reading if you've seen the films many times?

[Sinful]

Having said that, outside of the story being worse in the new Hobbit Trilogy, I like everything else about it better then TLotR Trilogy.

The Hobbit sucked.

So did LotRs was what I wrote. Never liked the OT even back in the day when it first came out either, my brother and I used to make fun of it because it's so full of cringe and eye rolling moments. So much so that after my latest viewing I'm debating if I should buy the physical books or just read them online to finally witness the unadulterated source material.

Only real saving grace to the Peter Jackson movies are some of the set pieces and visuals. Of which Bree being my fave;



^ If that can be replicated in a nice videogame RPG, that'd be swell. As that looks like my type of fantasy setting immersion.

That's pretty nuts, although I did watch the original trilogy extended versions back to back in a theater... with breaks it was about 13 hours. Amazing, but quite tiring.

It took me well over a year to watch the third hobbit, and I mainly did it just for fucks. Man he screwed that up.

So, on that note, are the books worth reading if you've seen the films many times?

Third Hobbit is the worst. It's all mindless spectacle battles from what I remembered, so no plans to ever watch it again. The adventure part of the story is also over by then too, so meh.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

When watching the first Hobbit I tried to appreciate the fact that they tried to make it look like a kid's book (kinda like the source material), but it just lacks all the qualities that made LotR (most of the trilogy at least) good to great... apart from all the missed opportunities what irked me the most was that it lacked the sense of adventure that the first LotR movei had. Third Hobbit movie suddenly turned into a war movie?!

As for the rest, Tolkien as an author as comparable to Arthur C Clarke: great imagination, but not a particularly good writer per se (simple characters, flat style, simple narrative structure). Parts of the LotR books were great, but inbetween you've got long stretches of boring shit. Took me four years to get through the whole thing, among else because I only read it when I was stoned. Which was necessary to make all the songs and stories and poems bearable...

[Squire Grooktook]

That's pretty nuts, although I did watch the original trilogy extended versions back to back in a theater... with breaks it was about 13 hours. Amazing, but quite tiring.

It took me well over a year to watch the third hobbit, and I mainly did it just for fucks. Man he screwed that up.

So, on that note, are the books worth reading if you've seen the films many times?

Ah ha, poor choice of wording on my part. When I say back to back, I meant we watched them one after another each day. So one movie a day. Concluding with Return of The King on New Years Eve.

Anyway, I'd definitely say yes to the book. I've heard some people say they can get boring at times (ChurchOfSolipisim re-iterated it just now) and...I don't think so, personally. I grew up reading stuff like Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Alexander Dumas...so in comparison to some of those multi-layered doorstoppers, I find LOTR to be pretty breezy, fun reading where most of the supposedly "boring" stuff helps to build the thick, uniquely mystical atmosphere. I don't think there's anything else quite like them, standing on the dividing line between true literature and fun adventure storytelling.

This also reminds me of how, a year or two ago, I read the first few pages of this thread, and was appalled when someone called Bram Stoker's Dracula (the novel) "boring as shit". Since that shit was a fucking cozy, spooky, emotional, and all around awesomely fun read for me....and revisiting the first page again, it was Solipisim again! No offense on him, but it just goes to show how much tastes can vary on this sort of thing I guess you'll either like it or you won't~

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

This also reminds me of how, a year or two ago, I read the first few pages of this thread, and was appalled when someone called Bram Stoker's Dracula (the novel) "boring as shit". Since that shit was a fucking cozy, spooky, emotional, and all around awesomely fun read for me....and revisiting the first page again, it was Solipisim again! No offense on him, but it just goes to show how much tastes can vary on this sort of thing I guess you'll either like it or you won't~

hahaha yeah, sorry mate! good times...

[Squire Grooktook]

Cheers <3

[blackoak]

Funny you guys bringing up LOTR, last month I watched it for the first time in ~10 years. Perhaps it's because of what came after, or the "peak epic" that was soon to follow, but I had a better appraisal of it than before. I'm right there with Grooktook in (begrudgingly) admiring a lot about them, despite knowing they could have been so much better. Jackson just fundamentally lacks the deep visual poetry of a Bergman, Kurosawa, or young Ridley (lol)--but he did chose great settings, made tasteful art design decisions, and chose fitting music (that eventually wears out its welcome).

It's all a touch cheezy but I still like it hehe. My favorite scenes are the wide shots of them roaming around the landscape, particularly in Fellowship. Some good speeches from Theoden too. I always loved his "where is the horse and the rider" speech.

[Steamflogger Boss]

TT and ROTK definitely drag a bit, especially if you are watching the extended editions. And I say this as someone who has probably seen them around 10 times each. I can happily watch Fellowship non-stop, it's great. The other two though I've become fond of fast forwarding in a few spots.

The Hobbit...what can I say. One viewing of each movie just to see them was enough.

The above post mentioned Kurosawa. I've been watching a lot of Japanese cinema lately including a bunch of Kurosawa. Got a fair bit of Criterion blurays awhile back. Seven Samurai is a true masterpiece. Probably the best one I've watched so far out of his films. Some good ones from other Japanese directors I watched recently are the Samurai Trilogy and Sword of Doom. A shame that the planned trilogy for Sword of Doom never came to fruition.

A few other good recent watches: The Rules of the Game (so damn funny), Drunken Angel and Good Morning.

[blackoak]

Rules of the Game is on my to-watch list. Last year I saw Grand Illusion for the first time and was very impressed.

Filmstruck has all the criterion stuff, which I believe has all Kurosawa's films atm. I've recommended mada da yo before, but I would add One Beautiful Sunday and Doudesukaden to that. The former is a sweet early Kurosawa movie about a Japanese couple on a no-budget date, and the latter is a flawed, slightly sentimental, but worthwhile take on post-war doldrums. I tried to get through The Idiot, his Dostoevsky adaptation, but being unfamiliar with the source material I got pretty bored hehe.

[BrianC]

Last Kurosawa I watched was Rashomon. Good stuff. I watched Yojimbo and Seven Samurai before and enjoyed them. Definitely plan to rewatch both. I also have Sanjuro and Hidden Fortress on Blu-ray and plan to watch them.

I know Kanopy, which can be viewed for free with a library card, has Kurosawa movies, as well.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Yeah Renoir is awesome. You'll very likely enjoy it. Grand Illusion was good too.

I've enjoyed Kurosawa's non-samurai films that I've seen so I'll have to check out One Beautiful Sunday as I've not seen that one yet.

Filmstruck is a good deal at $99 a year but I like collecting.

@Brian: Rashomon is one of his best for sure, I'd put it just behind Seven Samurai. I like Sanjuro a bit more than Yojimbo but both were good. Hidden Fortress is REALLY funny.

[drauch]

Ikiru is probably my favorite. I've seen a chunk, but I'd probably buy more of his films if someone like Eureka or Arrow would put them out. Funny I can import their stuff from across the ocean and get almost two films with on par transfers for the price of a Criterion on sale. But aye, guess when you've got the dominant market for quality transfers since laser disc you don't need to go down in price.

[charlie chong]

to lower the tone a little i watched jaws 3. i think i might become obsessed with this film like i was when i was a kid.
jaws 3 can swim backwards and she also growls it is quite amazing.
i've always wanted to watch it in 3d and now it has been released in that format but i have no 3d tv