Movies you've just watched

[EmperorIng]

Pet peeve in modern "period" movies (or any movies really): grit, dirt, and darkness = realism/verisimilitude. You'd better have a gravely-voiced main character as well, muttering his lines under his breath. The audiences won't know how to relate, otherwise!

[Skykid]

It's incredible it has as many redeeming moments as it has.

Where?

[BryanM]

It's incredible it has as many redeeming moments as it has.

Where?

Everything you're doing is wrong. I want you to know this.

[atheistgod1999]

I found this shitty Buzzfeed "article" shilling for Fembusters while fucking around on the internet about a week ago.

[xxx1993]

Saw Mechanic: Resurrection. I thought it was pretty good, and I wanted to see an R-rated action movie in the summer for this year for once. And I also thought it was a good movie for Hatsune Miku's birthday because I saw an LG G5 commercial with Jason Statham and it had a song by Hatsune Miku playing in the background. Fuck the haters (I'm looking at you, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB).

[xxx1993]

Mechanic: Daifukkatsu

[atheistgod1999]

Jackass Number Two (2006): *

While the TV series and first movie made me laugh my ass off constantly when I saw them last year, I didn't even find most of this funny; the closest things to slightly funny were Bam Margera's skits. Not even the Terror Taxi was that funny. It was just really boring (and severe cringe when Steve-O put the fishing hook through his left cheek).

[Skykid]

Saw Mechanic: Resurrection. I thought it was pretty good, and I wanted to see an R-rated action movie in the summer for this year for once. And I also thought it was a good movie for Hatsune Miku's birthday because I saw an LG G5 commercial with Jason Statham and it had a song by Hatsune Miku playing in the background. Fuck the haters (I'm looking at you, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB).

Dear oh dear.

Do you read books by any chance?

[Vexorg]

The Huntsman: Winter's War: * 1/2

About the best thing that can be said about this movie is that it has hardly any Kristen Stewart in it. Chris Hemsworth is wasted on a horrendously fake accent in a sequel to a movie that didn't warrant a sequel with a plot lifted straight out of one of Disney's recycle bins... Basically the perfect recipe for a 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[emphatic]

Last night, I saw Spy. I found it pretty funny, 3/5. I didn't expect the full on erect penis close-ups!

[xxx1993]

Saw Mechanic: Resurrection. I thought it was pretty good, and I wanted to see an R-rated action movie in the summer for this year for once. And I also thought it was a good movie for Hatsune Miku's birthday because I saw an LG G5 commercial with Jason Statham and it had a song by Hatsune Miku playing in the background. Fuck the haters (I'm looking at you, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB).

Dear oh dear.

Do you read books by any chance?

Only when I was in high school.

[atheistgod1999]

Dear oh dear.

Do you read books by any chance?

Only when I was in high school.

For English class, I'm guessing?

[BrianC]

Saw Night at the Opera with the Marx brothers on Saturday. Some of the singing didn't age well, but the movie was good stuff.

[xxx1993]

Dear oh dear.

Do you read books by any chance?

Only when I was in high school.

For English class, I'm guessing?

Yeah, for English.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Saw Mechanic Daifukkatsu today. Had the theater to myself which was nice, but the movie was shit. There's some really nifty action stuff here and there in the many violent fight scenes, but other than that the movie is a big mess.

Any hope I might've had for anything resembling the Bronson film was dashed when our hero Bishop opens the movie by revealing that he has traded in his love of classical music for a vinyl record of a sub-mediocre rock band that formed in 2009. The only apparent connections to The Mechanic are the title and name of the main character, and few tiny references to the 2011 movie. I mean they try desperately to cling to the idea that Bishop HAS to make these assassinations look like accidents, but I really have no idea why since the whole plot is about an illegal arms dealer hunting down a group of other illegal arms dealers who all know he is after them and therefore aren't fooled in the slightest by fake 'accidents', nor is there any reason why the authorities would connect the murders to the main bad guy illegal arms dealer, and even if they did, why the fuck would he care, they're already after him because he's an illegal arms dealer. I guess it doesn't really matter much, because it's a fucking mystery how anyone could be stupid enough to be fooled in the first place. One of these 'accidents' amounts to propping a corpse up in an unnatural pose after strangling him and poisoning him after making a big scene and telling everyone within earshot that he's going to be alone with the guy ten minutes before the guy is found dead, oh yeah and then minutes after the target dies Bishop blasts a hole through a wall to escape. As the viewer I think I am expected to believe that no one suspects a thing. Another 'accident' involves throwing a hand grenade into an elevator shaft and then detonating plastic explosives a few feet away from the target. This movie's tagline should've been MAXIMUM SUBTLETY!!!

The villainous plot is to send a girl to seduce Bishop, and then kidnap her, so that Bishop will do the villain's bidding in order to get her back. Bishop figures out the villainous plot almost instantly, and comes up with an ingenious plan of his own: he falls in love with the girl and then waits patiently for the bad guys to kidnap her, and then spends 90% of the rest of movie doing the villain's bidding in order to get her back. I can't make this shit up, folks.

Also a chick in heels effortlessly kicks the door of a cable car hard enough for it to break clean off and fall to the ground below. Fuck everyone who greenlit that scene.

[JBC]

Force Awakens for the first time since theatrical release. Seems to be at it's strongest when it's not shoehorning old characters in.

I really can't stand the little yellow lady, Maz. Hackneyed 'wise old bitch' character with annoying dialogue.

Other than that it's def the most visually beautiful Star Wars film. Everything looks incredible except Maz. Almost got through a whole Star Wars without an embarrassingly gross character design. Unprecedented.

Say what you want about Kylo Ren but his voice sounds damn cool when the helmet's on.

Rouge One looks more my thing. Ep VIII should be better since most of the 'MEMBA THIS???' stuff should be out of the way.

[iconoclast]

The Handmaiden (2016)

Park Chan-wook's new movie, and it'll most likely end up being the best film of 2016. I want to say it's a return to form for him, but really, Stoker is the only movie he's been involved with that's mediocre. Everything else is either really good at worst or a masterpiece at best, and The Handmaiden fits into the latter category.

[Vexorg]

Murder by Death: **1/2

A 1976 spoof whodunnit that's been frequently compared (often favorably) to Clue, but which just comes across as pretentious and unsatisfying in practice, and basically admits in the end that it wasted everyone's time. Basically, a bunch of copyright-friendly imitations of various famous film and book detectives are called together to solve a murder that hasn't actually happened yet. A few funny bits here and there, but ultimately I'd much rather watch Clue again than this. The fact that the Charlie Chan lookalike character is a pretty blatantly racist depiction doesn't help much, but such things seem to have been the norm at the time. Probably isn't helped much by the fact that its genre has largely fallen out of favor.

[Stevens]

Saw Mechanic Daifukkatsu today. Had the theater to myself which was nice, but the movie was shit. There's some really nifty action stuff here and there in the many violent fight scenes, but other than that the movie is a big mess.

Any hope I might've had for anything resembling the Bronson film was dashed when our hero Bishop opens the movie by revealing that he has traded in his love of classical music for a vinyl record of a sub-mediocre rock band that formed in 2009. The only apparent connections to The Mechanic are the title and name of the main character, and few tiny references to the 2011 movie. I mean they try desperately to cling to the idea that Bishop HAS to make these assassinations look like accidents, but I really have no idea why since the whole plot is about an illegal arms dealer hunting down a group of other illegal arms dealers who all know he is after them and therefore aren't fooled in the slightest by fake 'accidents', nor is there any reason why the authorities would connect the murders to the main bad guy illegal arms dealer, and even if they did, why the fuck would he care, they're already after him because he's an illegal arms dealer. I guess it doesn't really matter much, because it's a fucking mystery how anyone could be stupid enough to be fooled in the first place. One of these 'accidents' amounts to propping a corpse up in an unnatural pose after strangling him and poisoning him after making a big scene and telling everyone within earshot that he's going to be alone with the guy ten minutes before the guy is found dead, oh yeah and then minutes after the target dies Bishop blasts a hole through a wall to escape. As the viewer I think I am expected to believe that no one suspects a thing. Another 'accident' involves throwing a hand grenade into an elevator shaft and then detonating plastic explosives a few feet away from the target. This movie's tagline should've been MAXIMUM SUBTLETY!!!

The villainous plot is to send a girl to seduce Bishop, and then kidnap her, so that Bishop will do the villain's bidding in order to get her back. Bishop figures out the villainous plot almost instantly, and comes up with an ingenious plan of his own: he falls in love with the girl and then waits patiently for the bad guys to kidnap her, and then spends 90% of the rest of movie doing the villain's bidding in order to get her back. I can't make this shit up, folks.

Also a chick in heels effortlessly kicks the door of a cable car hard enough for it to break clean off and fall to the ground below. Fuck everyone who greenlit that scene.

Sounds like a shitheap. I'd like to see the original with Bronson.

[Zen]

The Handmaiden (2016)

Park Chan-wook's new movie, and it'll most likely end up being the best film of 2016. I want to say it's a return to form for him, but really, Stoker is the only movie he's been involved with that's mediocre. Everything else is either really good at worst or a masterpiece at best, and The Handmaiden fits into the latter category.

Ah, good to hear. Really looking forward to this one.
Avoided "Stoker" altogether. Last Park film I watched (and loved ) was "Thirst".

[soprano1]

The Fog (1980)
Not my favourite horror movie, but a damn well made one. The fog effects and the music were good and eerie as fuck.

[soprano1]

Ted 2
Unneeded sequel, but it's ok.

[Mischief Maker]

Monsters

Surprising movie. I liked it quite a bit. But in retrospect I have a huge bone to pick with the film:

Spoiler

One of the problems with the director hand-crafting all the CG is it becomes almost impossible for him to throw out weeks of effort because a scene just doesn't work.

I wish they left out the night vision beginning scene/true ending.

First of all, seeing the characters all die at the end is a lame Blair Witch/Cloverfield kind of rimshot ending that only works if the FOCUS of the movie is the monsters and how dangerous and scary they are.

Second, the rest of the movie seems like it was set up to gradually reveal the look of the monsters until the mating scene at the gas station when you see them full-on. That would have been great, except in the night vision scene we already saw the monsters full on so that layer of mystery is entirely spoiled.

Finally, the CG in the night vision scene looks the most fake out of all the entire movie. I was surprised how good they looked at the gas station scene after how awful they looked in the night vision scene.

But I'm mostly angry about that one part because the rest of the movie is so refreshing. I recommend it.

Is the sequel Dark Continent any good? The trailers look awful, actually.

[BIL]

Dark Continent really surprised me. It sounds like a fuck-awful Tremors knockoff in COD world, but it's actually really close in tone to the original. Quite contemplative. The army stuff is unremarkable but unobtrusive, and gotten out of the way pretty quickly. It's nothing I'd call a must-see, but it's a decent sequel.

I liked the original too, though as magnificent as the finale was, it relied a bit too much on "holy fuck don't go in the house" horror logic.

Spoiler

We already established earlier that these things react violently to light, indeed the male lead saved their asses by smashing the map light - so maybe see about dimming the blazingly illuminated gas station before getting too comfy?

Worth it though!

[Skykid]

Monsters is a very pleasant surprise. Above all of its achievements, the size of the budget was the one that impressed me the most - a genuine feat.

However - and sadly - Gareth Edwards then went on to all but ruin any invested faith with Godzilla 2014.

Never forget.

[soprano1]

Romeo and Juliet (1996)
Wow, the whole modern setting with original dialogue gimmick worked better than what i thought.
Mercutio's drag act is a bit weird, though.

[atheistgod1999]

Romeo and Juliet (1996)
Wow, the whole modern setting with original dialogue gimmick worked better than what i thought.
Mercutio's drag act is a bit weird, though.

I had to watch that in English class freshman year. Hated it XD

[EmperorIng]

I'll admit that I'm a Shakespeare stickler and mostly prefer it if the actors dress in period-appropriate costume.

I went to Chicago's Shakespeare Theater a few years ago for Julius Caesar set in "modern" times, with rock-n-roll, business suits, and then there was fuckin' EXPLOSIONS and gunfights on the set, with SWAT teams zipping down from the ceiling. As impressive as all that was, I was still sitting there as a curmudgeon saying "this is a bit excessive!"

[lilmanjs]

The Big Heat
Johnnie To's first crack at the crime/action genre he's known for these days. Not sure how much he directed aside from the action as he's a co-director, which is clearly mainly shot in the style he's known for. A cop starts having problems with his right hand, the hand he shoots with. It trembles to the point he can't fire at times. His old partner gets killed by some drug runners in another country and a cop from there comes to help out in Hong Kong. This is really quite different than the other crime movies I've seen from around the same period (1980s). Action is done well, especially the hospital shootout. Also, why the heck did Cinema City change their logo sequence? I rather like the original better than the awful gold C and bright red background.

[Mischief Maker]

I'll admit that I'm a Shakespeare stickler and mostly prefer it if the actors dress in period-appropriate costume.

I went to Chicago's Shakespeare Theater a few years ago for Julius Caesar set in "modern" times, with rock-n-roll, business suits, and then there was fuckin' EXPLOSIONS and gunfights on the set, with SWAT teams zipping down from the ceiling. As impressive as all that was, I was still sitting there as a curmudgeon saying "this is a bit excessive!"

So what did you think of Julie Taymor's movie adaptation of Titus Andronicus?

I love it, but more for the performances than the nutty set design.