Movies you've just watched

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

^Fair enough, but a problematic lack of sunlight is never expressed in either film. An oversight?

Lack of sunlight where? I dont get this.

[Moniker]

On Earth? I thought that you were saying that the point of the movies was the conclusion of having two suns, thus saving the world (which would necessitate the failing of the proper sun, as a plot device). Which was in response to my claim that having two suns would most certainly end the world. Obviously talking at cross purposes, here.

[Xyga]

@Moniker
Yeah 2010 is full of stupid things, but that's an 80's movie, when most movies were directed by kids.
An improbable blend of awesome and shit. Who cares ?

If you sit, review and take note of every thing that was wrong in cinema back then, you can pretty much thrash and burn your entire 80's shelf/folder.

Today we have too many directors trying to scratch the shit marks, the 80's are long over, film is serious business (too bad the stench remains) okay.
While they're busy at it, they just forget that awesome is usually good at hiding shit.

[Moniker]

@Moniker
Yeah 2010 is full of stupid things, but that's an 80's movie, when most movies were directed by kids.
An improbable blend of awesome and shit. Who cares ?

Um, not me? I just particularly didn't like 2010. There were plenty of great movies in the 80s. I'm not Skykid, and don't imbue my opinions with a categorical imperative, at least not usually. I'm not that confident.

Although awesome rarely hides shit, I'd have to say. [Insert your favorite lipstick-on-pig-type metaphor here.] I guess Arnie would be the main argument to the contrary.

[Xyga]

Exactly. Arnie drops a comeback line and shit runs away !

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

On Earth? I thought that you were saying that the point of the movies was the conclusion of having two suns, thus saving the world (which would necessitate the failing of the proper sun, as a plot device). Which was in response to my claim that having two suns would most certainly end the world. Obviously talking at cross purposes, here.

Oh, right. No - the sun dying was never a plot point in either story. The Jupiter sun was created to supposedly uplift primitive lifeforms on Europa.

As for whether a second sun would be problematic for Earth - well, I don't know. Jupiter is something like 4 times further away from us than the sun is and would make for a pretty tiny star. However, the monoliths would have severely increased it's mass (somehow) so that might cause problems for planetary orbits and junk. -And that's what I think the point of these films are - to go away and think about shit.



Stupid 80's movie? Yup, that'll be old Arthur making up crazy stories again. He really should do his research.

[Mischief Maker]

You guys do realise 2010 is based on Arthur C. Clarke's book, 2010? It happens to be quite faithful to the novel too - infinitely moreso than I Am Legend for example - so I don't get how changing the name would make much sense?

It has weaknesses, but I quite enjoyed elements of it. Comparing just about anything to 2001 is going to be an insurmountable struggle. 2010 was never really attempting to imitate its artistry, it's just a straight sci-fi novel adaptation.

Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke, is neck and neck with Dune for my favorite science fiction novel of all time. The sequels to Rendezvous with Rama, also written by Clarke, are terrible wrongheaded abominations full of forehead-slappingly awful betrayals of the original book. Dude REALLY lost his faith in humanity during the Reagan years. Besides, 2001 was written concurrently with the movie and the story is just as much Kubrick's baby.

The fact alone that the Russian spaceship was RUMBLING in space was proof this new director wasn't up to filling 2001's shoes. It took almost half a century for the makers of Gravity to realize, as Kubrick did, that the silence of space and the weirdness of weightlessness are part of what make space so scary.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

The fact alone that the Russian spaceship was RUMBLING in space was proof this new director wasn't up to filling 2001's shoes.

Yup. Design wise, 2010 just seems to copy Battlestar Galactica and whatever else was around at the time. Gumdrop control panels and all that.

It took almost half a century for the makers of Gravity to realize, as Kubrick did, that the silence of space and the weirdness of weightlessness are part of what make space so scary.

Blake's 7 managed this using only yoghurt pots and egg boxes.

[Xyga]

Gumdrop control panels

Love those. Also roaring engines and lazors that go PEW PEW.

[GaijinPunch]

Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke, is neck and neck with Dune for my favorite science fiction novel of all time. The sequels to Rendezvous with Rama, also written by Clarke, are terrible wrongheaded abominations full of forehead-slappingly awful betrayals of the original book. Dude REALLY lost his faith in humanity during the Reagan years. Besides, 2001 was written concurrently with the movie and the story is just as much Kubrick's baby.

I remember reading the first one, and then two sequels. Rama Revealed I never got to. Sounds like I don't have to. What I remember of the first one is that it was very "less is more".

[Skykid]

To repeat.

Like a first term film student trying to imitate Kubrick.

He's just following the novel. It's by no means a great film and Peter Hyams - the man when would go on to bring you Timecop - is nothing special as a director. But to suggest he's trying to ape the directorial style of Kubrick is a bit unfair: as I said, it's a surprisingly accurate portrayal of events occurring in the book of the same name.

Admittedly, WWIII on the ground was interesting. But then the encounter with Bowman's pre-Star Child transformations.. barf-worthy. Never read the novel

I have, and it's all in the novel, and the novel is great.

]Besides, 2001 was written concurrently with the movie and the story is just as much Kubrick's baby.

2001 is based on Arthur C. Clarke's original short story The Sentinel, where an alien object is found on the moon. Kubrick asked for an expansion on the idea and Clarke added the second leg to Jupiter while he and Kubrick fleshed out the HAL sidestory and Nietzsche-based philosophies. Clarke wrote the novel as an aside to the screenplay, which is why it has so much more detail than the film, and spends a large portion describing the transit to Jupiter.

The fact alone that the Russian spaceship was RUMBLING in space was proof this new director wasn't up to filling 2001's shoes. It took almost half a century for the makers of Gravity to realize, as Kubrick did, that the silence of space and the weirdness of weightlessness are part of what make space so scary.

I don't know why we're still questioning this. Nothing is up to 2001. Period.

@Moniker
Yeah 2010 is full of stupid things, but that's an 80's movie, when most movies were directed by kids.
An improbable blend of awesome and shit. Who cares ?

It's from the book. Not the crazy mind of an 80s director.

"Stupid 80's movie? Yup, that'll be old Arthur making up crazy stories again. He really should do his research."

^ This, basically.

of course I realize that. you've already explained exactly why I believe it should have been billed under a different title...

Comparing just about anything to 2001 is going to be an insurmountable struggle.

a different title could have potentially given the film a better opportunity to be judged on its own merits. I agree, it's not a bad film and we may not compare it to 2001 but it's exactly what *most* people will do.

Dude this is a stillborn argument. You can give it a different name but then people might wonder why it has 2001 characters Dave Bowman, Heywood Floyd, Dr. Chandra, HAL, the Monoliths, Discovery and lots of stuff about stargates in it. That it's based entirely on the successful novel 2010, sequel to successful novel 2001, may lead people to question why it's called 'Twenty Leagues in Space: The Year we get Twin Suns'.

For my money Hyams knew the risk and never in his right mind attempted to imitate Kubrick. He just took the adapted screenplay and put it together as a basic sci-fi movie. I see no shades of Kubrick copying in there at all.

[nasty_wolverine]

@skykid: how do you multiquote-multipost so easy? i got fed up with it with just a few in the DFK vs SDOJ thread.

[Skykid]

Magic!

And speed. I'm getting to be an old hand at this. You might be more surprised to know I make 90% of all contributions on my phone! I don't spend much time at home tbh.

[Ixmucane2]

Tulpa

On one hand, a valiant attempt by Federico Zampaglione to bring back the style and atmosphere of Dario Argento's early classics and other horror films in their vein.

• The standard plot: a mysterious murderer kills people connected with the protagonist in creative ways, and at the end his/her/its identity is revealed in a dramatic confrontation.
• Deliberately cheesy and obtrusive music.
• Creative ways to kill people.
• Filmed on location in the right location: the EUR in Rome. Indoor sets are unremarkable (mostly nice homes and offices) but also good.
• Good costumes and photography.

On the other hand, a miserable failure.

• Bad acting. Claudia Gerini could learn a lot from the CGI dinosaur-robots in Transformers 4: for example, they are silent.
• Bad dialogues, ranging from incorrect English to weird stupidity like "a garage's parking lot" (actually a plain underground parking lot).
• Mediocre sex scenes, from the man who joins two women but looks very scared to the other man who doesn't seem able to tie his girlfriend to the bed properly.
• Nonsensical, contradictory plot. A mixed blessing because suspense benefits (at some point I seriously suspected a rattlesnake to be the murderer or at least an accomplice), but ultimately most balls are dropped and the story reduces to very little.

[Skykid]

Cop Land

Good scenario, good cast, decent plot, good enough dialogue, pretty watchable little movie. Biggest issue was that it could have been 30 minutes longer (2.5hrs). There was nothing wrong with the pacing until it sort of fizzled out very quickly. The building tension and changing of Stallone's character's mindset suddenly fast-tracked, which lead to several silly implausibilities. It needed a little more slow burning time to build to a climatic face-off and allow Stallone's character some time to come around, but it was all packed into the last thirty minutes.

Not quite as promising as it was when it started out, but a half decent popcorn thriller nonetheless.

[Vexorg]

The thing about Arthur C. Clarke's novels is that even when they were completely wrong on the science fact, they were still surprisingly believable. For example, if you can find a copy of it, A Fall of Moondust is a particularly interesting one. It was a story published eight years before Apollo 11 based on a premise that a tourist shuttle taking lunar colonists on tours of one of the "Seas" of the Moon could sink into the fine particles of moondust and get trapped. Naturally, the fundamental premise of the story was later rendered moot by the discoveries made on the Apollo missions, but even so the story is still quite good and even somewhat believable.

I agree with the sentements on Rendezvous with Rama though. The first book was incredible, the second one (which, along with the other ones in the series, was largely written by another author, with Clarke only providing occasional input) was OK, but the subsequent sequels were nowhere near the same league. I believe Sierra did a video game adaptation (point-and-click adventure) in the late Nineties too, although I never bothered with it. The short version is that after the second one the whole thing just wandered too far from the original. It's interesting to see that the Wikipedia article for the co-author (Gentry Lee) notes criticism of his writing as containing "plentiful sex scenes unrelated to the plot." Come to think of it, that was basically the entire first third of Garden of Rama...

[Skykid]

I absolutely *love* A Fall of Moondust: what an incredible ride. It's pure sci-fi disaster magic and goes at a breakneck speed. It was the Clarke book I could see working best as a commercial movie (not a Kubrick movie) - it hits all the right notes - and I remember him saying it was on and off the cards many times to be optioned as a screenplay.

I don't understand Hollywood at all. You have the most vast back catalogue of literature that's perfect movie material, but instead they opt for remakes of movies not even a decade old and endless superhero reshashes.

Actually I take that back. I DO understand Hollywood. They don't trust their audience with a brain or to pay for anything that requires the least bit cognitive effort. If it's not dumb as fuck they don't think people will pay for it - and sadly they're right.

But don't blame the people Hollywood/commercial media: you made us this way, on purpose, you shitheaded bastards.

[Acid King]

Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films - If you're an American of a certain age you've probably heard of the legendary highway safety scare films of the mid-twentieth century. If not, then let me explain. Between the 50's and the 70's, a number of companies pumped out "educational films" designed to scare the bejebus out of high schoolers by showing them the gruesome aftermath of real life car accidents. They used real accident footage, both photos and film, and dramatizations to send the home the message that wreckless driving is not cool, man. Hell's Highway traces the development of the Highway Safety Foundation from a couple of amateurs taking photos of car accidents to turn in to educational films, to a million dollar organization that branched out to other types of educational films. The movie is mostly interviews spliced between footage of the films themselves, which are both hilarious and gruesome. Some of the most choice moments are interviews with people who were subjected to the movies as kids, especially the two men who watched a horrifying movie called "The Child Molester" in their kindergarten class. The production is rather primitive, but the focus is on the films themselves and the people involved with making them. Definitely worth checking out.

[BIL]

Ghosts... of the Civil Dead (1988) Australian pseudo-documentary on a brutal max security penitentiary. As a polemic on the prison industrial complex it is succinct, both traumatic and articulate. As a film it's sparse, occasional flashes of Verhoeven-ghastly faux cheer and the haunting closing scenes aside. Characters are distinct but given little opportunity to develop, stewing away in confinement as the procession of tediums and horrors ticks along in ever more inflammable conditions. Ultimately this stultifying, malevolent air and the system at its root forms the movie's strongest feature by far. Worth a watch if you can dig a more contemplative and utterly unleavened prison movie - the bouncy IMDB summary "Prison gangs clash in a high-tech security jail where there are no rules" is as misleading as they come. Oz in Oz it ain't!

Hell's Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films - If you're an American of a certain age you've probably heard of the legendary highway safety scare films of the mid-twentieth century.

Sounds good! I love PSA retrospectives. Somewhat related, from the Britlandshire side of the pond I enjoy Scarfolk Council's fictitious yet eerily credible 1970s materials.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Finally checked out Luc Besson's Lucy which makes it's proper North American film debut today (7-25-2014) -- it clocks in at a modest one hour and 28 minutes in duration. It's about a drug mule and her further trippy adventures. By combining both the action film genre (complete with some intense gun battles/firefights, high speed car chase scenes, etc.) with the sci-fi genre, it works quite well as a hybrid dual-genre combined film. One might recall a classic pivotal scene from one of Besson's earlier films, Leon The Professional, as a homage indeed, in this new flick (brings a smile to my face just thinking about it). Of course, Mr Besson wrote and directed Lucy himself -- it's been quite a while since he has directed another film.

Industrial Light & Magic handled majority of the CG EFX scenes in this film with smaller CG EFX scenes farmed out to smaller CG EFX houses as usual in the international/Hollywood film industry.

Some scenes were filmed on location in France, Berlin and Taipei.

Does this Lucy hybrid flick hold a candle to Besson's earlier films like Leon The Professional and La Femme Nikita? Considering that those two older films were made during another era, they all share those unmistakable Besson-trademarked stylized gun fights -- that is a given/expected. But by exploring the sci-fi genre, Lucy does add a new wrinkle/spin to the action film genre.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[SuperGrafx]

In the mood to watch some movies this weekend. Might start with the first three Rambo films

[drauch]

Really wish Luc Besson would just stop making movies. Easily one of the biggest sellouts of the film world right up there with George Miller. So many great films, then BAM--style is gone, make some children's films, then shit all over your old movies with trite reboots and commercial sci-fi mockery. I kind of thought faith was restored for at least Besson with Adele Blanc-Sec, but more childish nonsense and some really painful CGI. The biggest enigma is the inclusion of superfluous brief nudity for what is ostensibly a children's film of DTV quality. For what it's worth, at least Miller's production of the original Babe is phenomenal and the animatronics and puppeteering is fantastic. Babe 2: Pig in the City is another enigma: half children's film, half talking animal surrealist nightmare. Money talks. Speaking of George's and worthless rants that spew from my shit mouth, I wish George A. Romero would go ahead and sod off.

This concludes my worthless rant.

[Damocles]

Golgo 13: The Professional

I've been watching the television series, but when I saw him shoot through a building to assassinate a target I knew I was watching something special. Also, hello early and very out of place CGI. That CGI helicopter definately does not mesh well with the traditionally animated characters.


What with the whole "humans only use 10% of their brain" bullshit, I don't think I could ever watch Lucy. I realize it's a plot device, but goddamn, if they keep saying it idiots are going to keep believing it.

Also, thank god no one has made the last 2001-series books into movies. Other than the novelty of bringing Frank Poole back, there's not a lot of fun there. Clarke felt the need to explain the motive and meaning behind pretty much everything that went on in the series and ultimately makes it far less interesting.

[drauch]

Golgo 13: The Professional very well may be my favorite Japanese animated film. Yeah, the CGI is incongruous as all hell, but I guess It'd be easy to want to experiment with new 3D animation techniques, especially when they were so rarely seen at the time. Still, all that aside, I'd love for that helicopter scene to be omitted in some sort of Director's Cut that will never exist since Dezaki is dead. REGARDLESS, such a stylish, stoic, badass flick. Does the comic justice and shows Duke as he should be: a near silent hardass who doesn't even seem to enjoy sex!

[BIL]

Yeah, those scenes of Duke lying there like a frowning girder while hawt babe of the hour madly bounces and writhes away on top... even the gruff indifference of the "shag or die" bit from the first Lone Wolf And Cub is eclipsed.

"Pray For You" jams. Those skeletons fared a lot better than the helicopters in the primordial CG stakes. Still fucked-up looking, but what'd you expect from dudes with no ligaments?

Rewatched This is Spinal Tap last night. Put this off for way too long - great comedy through and through. I'd thought it might seem puerile now that Sex Farm and Big Bottom's lyrics are no longer the roaring amusements they were in middle school. It's a document of the puerile and pathetic all right, gloriously and ever knowingly so. There's also genuine warmth and weathered camaraderie in the band's struggles against the dying of the light, obviating today's abundance of nonfictional and much wilder rocker debauchery. Could've been about a flagging cheese shop and it'd still be a great movie.

[lilmanjs]

I've seen a few movies since I've last had real internet, but I won't go posting about all of them as well, I can't clutter up the thread.
The Big Heat
This one was recommended to me on here, so my mother and I rented it from the library and quite enjoyed it. A nice little twist and then everything starts falling into place. Good Film Noir this was.

Robots
Yup the animated feature. I quite enjoyed it still after all these years of not having seen it. Great voice cast and a solid script unlike most of the CGI kid movies of late.

Shogun's Shadow
This was shaping up to be really neat and had some nice fight sequences till they found horses and started running off. Que the bad 80s rock tune that felt really out of place. Still this was a decent movie marred by that bad rock tune. Nice action, and it was a good story.

[rapoon]

Mad Max: Road Fury (First Trailer)

[drauch]

Mad Max: Road Fury (First Trailer)

GET THAT CRAP OUTTA HERE.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

So is that Mad Max: Road Fury a proper sequel or is it a reboot? Can't be bad if it's directed by George Miller himself, right? Interesting cameo shot with the Interceptor car & that mounted super charger revving up in the opening scene of that trailer.

Was hoping that a proper fourth Mad Max film with Mel Gibson would take place in the mid-1990s but it never happened despite Gibson expressing interest in doing a fourth one.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Stevens]

In the age of the internet it is easy to log into Amazon and buy what you want.

That said there is a special feeling when you walk into a place and find the movie you're looking for. After years of looking I was able to get my hands on Grosse Pointe Blank for $1.

I've seen it a ton of times. It's well written, acted, has an incredible soundtrack, and has aged amazingly well. Easily Cusak's best film. Minnie Driver and Dan Aykroyd are strong as well.

It never gets old.