Movies you've just watched

[Stompp]

A million ways to die in the West - horribly bad movie but works fine a slow Friday evening in the sofa with beer and chips - if you can stand the low level, below the belt humor

[Mischief Maker]

A million ways to die in the West - horribly bad movie but works fine a slow Friday evening in the sofa with beer and chips - if you can stand the low level, below the belt humor

The crazy thing is, that's probably the movie that opened the door to Cosmos 2.

[Xyga]

The Black Hole (1979 - It was on my list but I've waited 35 years to watch it lol)

Strange mixture of cheap-ass pulp stereotypes and actually pretty neat space opera themes and visuals.

I agree with some comments I've read here and there: it could have been awesome in better hands.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

^Love that ending!

[Kaiser]

http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/10/29/this- ... r-genisys/

A BIT OF A SPOILER RANT

Not really a "what you've watched" post but a little rant. I'll start by saying that Terminator didn't NEED a reboot, yes this is a FULL on reboot with SOME changes which makes me facepalm, what the fuck Hollywood? This is gonna be worse than T3/Salvation for sure, SEE, my main problem is, as terrible T3/Salvation were as terminator movies, they could still unfucked it by making a simple movie, where John Connor after Salvation finds the original "Arnie" T-800, reprograms him, sends him back in time to kill the creators of Skynet because the whole OH NOES THE JUDGEMENT DAY CANNOT BE STOPPED ONLY DELAYED is one of the worst fucking excuses for a plot ever.

Of course, it could be done with a nice twist that OTHER terminators are guarding the creators of skynet, so it could be sort of a 1 vs many terminator movie, sure it would'nt be ambitious writing-wise BUT IT WOULD BE BETTER than whatever they are going to come up with.

A BIT OF A SPOILER RANT

[Ed Oscuro]

dat face

[rapoon]

A Most Wanted Man - A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg, where he gets caught in the international war on terror. 7/10

Starred Up - A troubled and explosively violent teenager is transferred to adult prison where he finally meets his match - a man who also happens to be his father.
ben mendelsohn is incredible. fantastic film but difficult to watch. an easy 8/10.

Salinger - An unprecedented look inside the private world of J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye.
marred with terrible music and celebrity interviews (why are you here, and why were interviews w/ gore vidal and other literary figures cut short?)
lost potential. 5/10. for those interested, per the j.d. salinger literary trust his unpublished work is to be released beginning in 2015 through 2020.

[Skykid]

Leviathan

Recommended in my request for a request for bad sea monster movies, although I ended up watching this alone.

So cliche it's hilarious, robbing both The Thing's genetic assimilation of cast in confined space and Alien's stalker monster routine - and doing a far worse job of both - I'd be lying if I said I didn't find some entertainment value here nevertheless.

Ridiculous deaths owing to rubbery serpent appendages and funny editing where people kind of get clumsily grabbed and end up dead in a burst of camera cuts, this was a good bad claustrophobic late 80s monster movie that made up for its relatively low budget and one awful actor with sets, sets, sets - atmosphere created by physical workmanship - some reasonably good acting, particularly Peter Weller, countdown sequences, and Ernie Hudson, custodian of the movie's funniest one liners.

My favourite is when they're standing behind a steel door being punched in by the serpentine freak, flamethrowers at the ready, and icy corporate bitch lady appears on the videocom to offer her sincere apologies.

"I am sorry" she says, "I know you must have been through hell."

To which Hudson shrieks,

"Bitch, we still here!"

[drauch]

If you're wanting more decent budget sea monster stuff, check out Deep Star Six and Deep Rising if you haven't already!

[Squire Grooktook]

Watched the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi.

I read the book 3-4 years ago and loved the hell out of it. Had no knowledge of the movie and had no idea what to expect other than Bela Lugosi's iconic performance.

Long story short the movie is kinda okay I guess if taken as a silly oldschool b-movie with some campy nostalgia going for it. But it's neither a good film (dat anti climax ending) nor a good adaptation of the novel.

I'm a fan of the book, but I'm pretty easy going so I'm not such a snob that I'd get offended by anyone not treating it as sacred. I was more thinking of walking out because it just was really boring for the first 2/3rds. I mostly stayed for Bela Lugosi, but the wait kind of payed off because I also ended up really liking Van Helsing. Gotta love his kooky glasses, and he made a great worthy opponent to Dracula. Renfields nutty performance was amusing too, though definitely in a hammy sort of way rather than legit scary.

Overall a bit boring in parts, but not a bad way to kill an hour + 20 minutes, so long as you don't go in expecting anything else but a bad b-movie with some amusing points here and there. You won't be entertained though if you go in expecting anything "serious" though.

[Vexorg]

Saw parts of a couple of movies tonight:

Beetlejuice: ***

Most of my familiarity with the character of Beetlejuice comes from the 90s cartoons, which apparently have little to do with the film. I did miss about the first half hour or so, but it sounds like I didn't really miss much there. Some interesting 80s practical effects work, but aside from that it was pretty much a standard Tim Burton film.

The Addams Family (1991): ***1/2

Interestingly enough, I hadn't ever just sat down and watched this one, but I still recognized quite a bit of it from quotes used in the pinball machine based on the movie. There is some really good acting in this one, but the plot comes across as kind of pointless (but that seems to be par for the course when you start basing movies off of old sitcoms.)

[Skykid]

The Maze Runner

Yeah.

So something about this movie had a certain 80s vibe. Cast of kids: Check. Predominantly male: Check. Dark edge: Check. Unusually imaginative concept: Check.

Now I'll tell you everything wrong with it. You may consider these spoilers, I just think it's a critique.

The script is difficult to judge. It's not bad per se, it's just about as trite and fucking hackneyed as it possibly could be. And I mean that in the sense that absolutely everything they say is utterly predictable. When it leaves the character's lips its as though you can hear a thousand movies echoed behind it. The exchanges between characters have zero originality. There wasn't a single line in the entire movie that stuck in the memory, and sadly this reflected on the characters, who were tarred with a carbon cliche element thanks to being embued with little more than a billion pre-existing film characteristics.

Thankfully this certainly doesn't kill the movie. Tons of stuff in here is done well. The camera doesn't cut like an impatient coke addict, and instead takes its time to allow the characters to interact. It's obvious it's adapted from a novel too, because it doesn't stink of that same old Hollywood glossy shit that turns up six times a month.

The acting ranges. And I mean it hits every number on the spectrum. The main kid is good, and beneath him is a nice even curve right down to the bottom, with some little fat kid who's just useless and a girl who's not much better.

The idea for this film is amazing - at least from the poster. It's called The Maze Runner. It's about kids put into a maze who have to fight for their lives to find a way out. That's so fucking on the money it made my balls ache just thinking about it. Unfortunately it doesn't deliver this even halfway. What happened it patently obvious: they struggled to adapt the novel into the two hour run time, and the parts they chose to include perhaps weren't the wisest. Now this doesn't mean it's not entertaining - far from it. It's an enjoyable, intriguing watch, it just fails to live up to the expectation of mazes with traps and people dying.

SOME SPOILERS

Here's how it goes. This kid arrives in the maze central garden, a safe zone, after the rest of the kids have been there 3 years. Ok. Turns out the kid's got balls, they make him a 'runner', one of the dudes who has the minerals to go into the maze on a regular basis and try to find a way out. Perfect. Where's the problem? He doesn't go into the maze hardly ever. 3 times total, and the first and last are brief. Very little happens. Why? Because all the other kids have already mapped the maze entirely. So the majority of the movie is spent talking about "how it is" living in the maze, transiently trying to flesh out some of the characters (not so good) and lots of reflection and in-fighting.

What this boils down to is when he finally goes into the maze to find a way out, there's almost nothing to see of any note. The other kid knows the way and he just follow hims to the destination. This daylight investigation is also by far the most interesting part of the movie, and unfortunately only happens once. In-fact, it's the only part where you can say they really did some good maze running. It's got tension, a narrow escape, some good imagination.

What the fuck happened to the rest of it? I don't really care about people skewering spiders on sticks, that shit's just lame. I WANT TO SEE SOME FUCKING MAZE RUNNING. IT'S CALLED THE MAZE RUNNER! ARGH! WHY WASN'T THIS MADE IN THE 80s?!!

What they should have done is clear as a bell: don't make this token kid turn up after 3 years, he should have been there from the beginning. He should be a mapper, helping to chart the maze. The audience gets to witness nail-biting events one after the other - a deviously devised maze of death tricking and spitting traps at every turn, picking off children with enigmatic sadism until one lone soldier beats it through pure defiant cool, wit and intelligence. There's so much opportunity in the concept it could be three volumes long.

But I suppose that would be my movie.

Anyway, I digress. It's still better than most crap that exists in this bracket of movie. I prefer it to all the constant Marvel formula movies and I would invite more. The plot itself is riddled with utter idiocy of the highest order and the ending is completely fucking shit - the way they find their way out of the maze is just garbage. It's like exploiting a design flaw. The maze doesn't have any clever trickery to discover the exit, like Cube - in-fact I don't think there is an exit. They just kind of bullshit their way out. It's full of failures like this: they seem to set things up, like the way the maze changes shape, and it boils down to absolutely nothing. So prepare for that.

I spent at least 30 minutes trying to figure out where the Korean got his hairspray from, too.

[CMoon]

Just watched Se7en for halloween. Blu ray was $7(Se7en) so it seemed like a good buy. I think I've only seen this one other time outside of the theatre but remembered everything quite vividly. Beyond the initial shock of the film, part of what genuinely makes it good are the themes that it deals with. The killer is focusing on sins that according to him, none of us should accept, while Freeman points out the greatest problem with 'the city' is that apathy -is- a solution. Idealistically, Spacey and Freeman almost end up agreeing with each other, though Freeman wants to protect 'the city' while Spacey thinks he can change it fundamentally somehow (or even destroy it.) The City is clearly a fourth character alongside the Freeman/Spacey/Pitt trio. Having lived on both coasts, I still can't tell where it is supposed to be. The final scene is in CA, but there are things that convince me this isn't LA but rather some mythical hodgepodge of every metropolis. The constant rain, the squalor and foul lighting in every scene (some really beautiful cinematography incidentally) all seem to add up to more than just a setting, especially since so many of the conversations involve the city.

The funny thing to me while watching it this time and thinking about these themes was how it paralleled No Country for Old Men. And of course, when I looked up the film on IMDB, there's a big discussion about the thematic similarities. I don't think the films actually have much in common, but they are two of the only films I know that seem to proudly assert that fatalistic attitude..at least in recent times.

One last bit, as far as movies go, I feel Se7en manages to bring together elements of The Third Man and The French Connection....it is just a superficial comparison, but the movie feels both rooted in classic hollywood (unlike a lot of other films from the 90's), while hybridizing some of the noir genres. I'm glad I rewatched it, but am pretty sure we'll be on to another format by the time I want to watch it again.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I don't think much of Se7en, but never mind.
My biggest problem with neo-noir is that, well, after The Big Lebowski, only this really delivered. Some great movies must be waiting to be made...

[Acid King]

I don't think much of Se7en, but never mind.
My biggest problem with neo-noir is that, well, after The Big Lebowski, only this really delivered. Some great movies must be waiting to be made...

Man, if you think of a style that has, at this point, more than four decades of films to its credit and you can only point to one highpoint, you either have spectacularly shitty taste or just have not seen many movies. Body Heat? Point Blank? The Director's Cut of Payback? To Live and Die in LA? LA Confidential? Blast of Silence? Le Samourai? Brick? The Coen's even did neo-noir better in the Man Who Wasn't There and Blood Simple. There's atleast few dozen great neo noir films out there.

[Skykid]

you either have spectacularly shitty taste

I was under the impression this had been firmly established somewhere between comments citing Akira as having poor animation and Michael Jordan In the Windy City appearing as a platform game recommendation.

[Some-Mist]

blue ruin on thursday. it was so well shot, had a great story with many twists, was well received, and was crowdfunded... it's mind blowing. there's something they keep out of the trailer which is great editing on their part. I was completely thrown off.

Spoiler

he spends maybe 10-20 minutes with a beard/scraggly hair, and he spends the rest of the movie clean shaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJo1qrr_8Hc

drag me to hell and session 9 on friday
drag me to hell had quite a few dopey parts that turned me off, but I guess that was the point of the movie since it was by the same guy who did the original evil dead and the remake as well.
I liked drag me to hell more than session 9 tho, as session 9 was more of a drawn out psychological horror movie (similar to the silent hill games) but with no major payoff and cliche plot points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WScqbh3_LS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsxkRNvEbhM

almost saw skeleton twins on saturday but my buddy's car broke down when we were on the way, and he had to have it towed back to the suburbs. it was pretty funny actually.

went and saw birdman and nightcrawler last night, and although both were great... I honestly preferred birdman. it was great seeing michael keaton in a lead role again, the transitions were amazing making the entire movie feel like one giant scene, the majority of the soundtrack was an instrumental drum track which I absolutely loved, and although I guessed many of the plot points early into the movie... it was still enjoyable to see it play out.
best part of nightcrawler was jake gyllenhaal.. and if it weren't for his performance, it probably would've sucked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJfLoE6hanc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1uP_8VJkDQ

still really want to see skeleton twins, harmontown, and hellaware

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQJ6vb-Pzb8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HM11V88rE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejgZEce8oqI

[GaijinPunch]

The final scene is in CA, but there are things that convince me this isn't LA but rather some mythical hodgepodge of every metropolis.

A train every 5 minutes. That narrows it down, assuming it's definitely in North America.

The funny thing to me while watching it this time and thinking about these themes was how it paralleled No Country for Old Men. And of course, when I looked up the film on IMDB, there's a big discussion about the thematic similarities. I don't think the films actually have much in common, but they are two of the only films I know that seem to proudly assert that fatalistic attitude..at least in recent times.

No Country's theme of randomness overpowers most any other theme in the film. For Se7en, it is most definitely not random. Not sure that I'd draw any similarities to the two other than having deranged antagonists.

I'm glad I rewatched it, but am pretty sure we'll be on to another format by the time I want to watch it again.

We talked about this at a dinner par-tay last night. The following is a true story, and it involves an ex-colleague whom I'm going to meet up with soon.

About 10 years ago when I was still working in our small office in Tokyo, one of the partners/traders had mentioned he wanted to get back in shape. The next morning, he comes in w/ a coffee and a double-fudge brownie for breakfast. I reminded him that, "Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins" to which he replied, "I'm all of the seven deadly sins..." After a pause, I said, "how could you be pride?". It took him a minute, and after he gave me a weird look he said, "Pride's not one of the seven deadly sins." When I mentioned, "it's even in the movie", he looked at me with firm resolve, stuck out his opened, right hand, and said, "ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS! Shake my hand, mother fucker. SHAKE... MY ... HAND...!!!" Which I did... After a countdown which was read out loud by a 3rd party exactly 2 seconds after the hand shake finished, there was a roar in the office, accompanied by high fives and other taunts. It took a couple of months but I collected.

[spadgy]

The 2014 Godzilla. Not enough Godzilla in it for my liking. But I did still enjoy it; I was hankering for some high-budget action to pass a Saturday night in, and that's what I got.

And then Dead Snow/Død Snø for my Halloween film. Not perfect at all, and utterly unoriginal, but lots of fun too. Great physical special effects, and well framed, but so much incongruity in the scene spaces. People picking up weapons that had just been dropped somewhere utterly different, on foot chase scenes where people would suddenly be in a totally different place with a camera cut and such. Annoyed the hell out of me.

[options]

Man of Steel

*shakes head* No, no, no, no, no.

::contains spoilers::

First of all, the soundtrack was really heavy-handed; the whole thundering drums thing made the first 20 mins or so come off as an extended trailer.

None of the characters had any believable emotional interactions. Clark's first encounter with his real dad might as well have been him talking to the postman. Only the main villain had any real weight to his performance.

The product placement was facepalm inducing.

I liked the Dragonball-esque fight choreography, but overall the visual effects were subpar compared to other movies of this magnitude. (And speaking of which, I hated the fact that Metropolis is practically leveled and everyone suddenly disappears from the streets except the three characters from the newspaper. Did they repopulate the city themselves??)

And the biggest flaw: the 'discovery' scene, where the hero awakens to his powers—which in my opinion is the crux of any superhero origin story—was nowhere near as cool and engrossing as it should've been. That's the point when the movie should really grab you and make you want to be the character, to feel what they're feeling. Here, I didn't care. Everything just felt flat and uninspired.

Thumbs down.

What was the general consensus when this was released?

[Obiwanshinobi]

There's atleast few dozen great neo noir films out there.

Wouldn't call them "great", but I found Renaissance and The Crimson Rivers to be alright. Even the English dub in the latter is decent. Remarkable sense of place, too (karst topography).

[Skykid]

What was the general consensus when this was released?

People who haven't the ability to note when something is godawful trash managed to defend it, to my amazement.

As I mention at any given opportunity, I almost walked out of the theatre. Borderline unwatchable.

Most critics who possess any critical ability panned it. Red Letter Media's review is hilariously scathing.

I agree with everything you say. It's accurate. Although for me it's the tip of the iceberg. That movie is seriously shit on almost every possible level.

[options]

Red Letter Media's review is hilariously scathing.

That was quite enjoyable. Thank you for introducing me to this site.

[Skykid]

Red Letter Media's review is hilariously scathing.

That was quite enjoyable. Thank you for introducing me to this site.

Your first time there? Man, make some popcorn and go for the Star Wars prequel reviews, you're in for a treat.

[GaijinPunch]

Your first time there? Man, make some popcorn and go for the Star Wars prequel reviews, you're in for a treat.

They're the only thing good to come out of the prequels.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I liked the hardware designs (particulary those droids, hostile in Republic Commando).

[Mischief Maker]

Red Letter Media's review is hilariously scathing.

That was quite enjoyable. Thank you for introducing me to this site.

Your first time there? Man, make some popcorn and go for the Star Wars prequel reviews, you're in for a treat.

Better to start with the Trek movies and work your way up to the prequels, or you'll be thrown for a loop by all the "interludes."

[Vexorg]

I thought Man of Steel was pretty average all things considered, but even with that I thought the negative reactions I've seen in the thread are a bit overblown. Reasonably watchable, but nothing you'd ever want to watch more than once, and a pretty clear indication that DC isn't even in the same league as Marvel when it comes to making entertaining superhero movies (then again, they seem to be stuck on the whole grimdark bit anyway...)

[Lord Satori]

What I found absurd was the explanation for how he got his powers. "Oh, it's because of the different atmosphere." I'm pretty sure breathing in different air doesn't give people laser vision. Also the fact that Zod (why didn't he say "kneel before Zod"?!) and the others got them right away while Superman took his entire life to develop his.

[Skykid]

I thought Man of Steel was pretty average all things considered, but even with that I thought the negative reactions I've seen in the thread are a bit overblown.

They're not.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


I'm doing really well at seeing lots of crap Hollywood movies in theatres while not paying for them, simply because I refuse to pay for them and all my friends keep insisting "we want to see it, we're paying, you're coming!"

Lamentably, sometimes the pain of being witness to what human beings consider 'entertainment' these days and how that bodes for future input, output and idiocracy, is almost not worth the price of free.

That said, this Turtles reboot wasn't actually the worst thing ever. It was better than Man of Steel, for example.

First things first: script is hideous, all humour between human characters is wincingly appalling, as is the accompanying improvisation; Whoopie Goldberg looks and sounds like an Amsterdam hooker who takes it in the ass, and Megan Fox...

Well, Megan Fox is the worst thing about the movie. This is, for the most part, a carbon paint by numbers Hollywood adventure rigidly constructed to a formulae consisting of having certain long-winded lynchpin effects sequences, bad guys with no motive, plots so absurd and senseless they're forgotten almost the instancy the related dialogue has been muttered - BUT, and I stress, Megan Fox is so awful it's brain shattering.

Whatever was decent about the movie (and it had bits) she detracted from. She can't act for shit, can't say a line convincingly, has zero charisma, looks like plastic, may as well be plastic, and defiled the warm and loveable character than was April O'Neil. Fox had zero sex appeal for me because she was so cold and lifeless you might as well be sticking it in a corpse in meat locker.

Anyway, apart from the plot, dialogue, most of the acting being trash, the Bay Team always having to cast William Fichtner in every single goddamn movie like he's some kind of CEO who always wants in, Shredder being a CG entity who looked like garbage, Splinter being a CG entity who looked like garbage - at least - the character of the Turtles was upheld to some degree. They're ugly (why nostrils?) and not quite so cool as they were when I was a kid, but the humour and personalities of the Eastman and Laird originals is strong enough to just shine through all the schlock on top. I didn't like Donatello being overly geeked up, but the other three maintained their original characters well-enough, and the harmony as a unit was in check. Leonardo should really have been voiced by Cam Clarke for great justice, but ultimately the constant goofing off and one-liners while battling (gun wielding...) foot clan soldiers rekindled my memories of why the original comic foursome were so much fun.

As a movie, shit, of course. As a Turtles movie... well it's not like the originals were good, but still shit.