Movies you've just watched

[BrianC]

Watched the Mark of Zorro. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Basil Rathbone made a great villain, though his character (Captain Esteban Pasquale) is similar to the one he played in Robin Hood (Sir Guy).

[Skykid]

Watchmen is still probably the most successful comic book adaptations I've ever seen and one half of Snyder's fluke duo (Dawn of the Dead being the other), but it's not really what I would call a superhero movie, it's too complex.

It's a horrible piece of shit, not only as a film version of a goddamn comic masterpiece, but also as a film itself. Here's some shit I posted about it on some other messageboard:

Watchmen Director's Cut 3/10

Watched it again just to make sure it was really as bad as the Reelapse crew made it out to be. It was. It's basically a b-movie by an almost talent-free music video director that disguises behind glossy visuals and high production values. Some of the things that sucked about it:
- horrible choice of songs for the soundtrack
- horrible acting throughout & horrible casting
- horrible, cheesy dialogue
- horrible fighting scenes (the next time I see a wired up action scene with shitty drum'n bass in the background I swear I'll... probably turn off the film) with lots of dumb posing
- Rorschach's grating voice - haha, how stupid to simply lift this from the Batman film
- shit that due to the director thinking posing and such is cool didn't make any fucking sense at all (in the Comedian's appartment: Rorschach standing on the windowsill in plain sight, cop sees him, starts shooting, Rorschach's suddenly gone - what the fuck happened? he vanished into thin air as soon as the bullets hit him? yeah, FUCK you, Zack.)
- ridiculous overuse of slomo
- shitty ending. Although I loved the Squid in the comic, I wouldn't have minded about a different ending. This one didn't make much sense, though. Besides, it removed all the muckiness of Veidt's mass murder and made it look almost clinically clean. No blood, no dead people with open eyes in grotesque poses. No impact.
- hardcore hero suits that tried to make the characters look super tuff and cool
- painfully uninspired from an aesthetic point of view.
- no sense of impending doom at all, no excitement, just boring scene after boring scene
- dumbing down of the complexities of the comic to an almost insulting level (the group's called Watchmen now, huh)

Every time I read a review that tries to make the reviewer look like an intellectual that "got" the greatness of the film I shake my head in disbelief. What a retard you have to be to think that this is either a good film in itself or an appropriate filming of the comic. There are some good things about it, but all those things were lifted from the comic and simply stuck in there without thinking a second about things like context and medium.

Btw the 3 points were for the gore scenes, Billy Crudup which was pretty good as Dr Manhatten (the Mars scene was ok, too), and the opening montage which almost led me to believe that the film might work when I saw it for the first time. Besides, I like gory b-movies.


Note to Skykid: I don't think you're a retard...

I appreciate that, but I disagree. It was divisive among people before I saw it, but I've seen it twice and as a comic book adaptation of a comic book I had already read I felt as though it managed to follow the source material well enough and close enough to capture its nuance. Not entirely of course - this is a Hollywood production of a Zack Snyder film after all, and as such there was the odd shitty actor to suffer, some amateurish moments, and some off beat styling and narrative changes that made me squirm.

Thankfully none of it amounted to catastrophe. I remember finding it less impressive on repeat, but not diminished enough to call it a failure. Watchmen is an incredibly difficult graphic novel to adapt into a movie - almost impossible consider the constraints of the runtime - but I feel as though it was handled fairly well on the whole. I think you're being considerably harsh: you should have far lower to almost zero expectation when watching a Hollywood attempt to do justice to a momentous piece of work.

[GaijinPunch]

Well it's not a patch on No Country For Old Men if that's the case.

Nothing is... or likely ever will be.

[Zen]

Passengers (2016) - Morten Tyldum

Spoiler

A guy steals a life for his sole companionship.

The film then atempts to force itself into a matinee romance between the pair after this crime. The film is quite obviously broken. The script was in limbo since 2007 and is by Jon Spaihts who also wrote the script for Prometheus (2012).
Now, I dont know whether it was a shit script to begin with or if someone just decided to force this film into a fucking Milquetoast date film (which seems more likely given the choice of primary actors) but the dark themes quite clearly clash with the film we get to see.
Leading to even more confusion is the score. It is hard to remember a more ill-scored film (and its by Thomas Newman for God sake! and the score was nominated for an academy award ) What the fuck was going on here then? Action music played over tragic drama?
The whole debacle is schizophrenic in the extreme.
Mr. Fishburne's brief cameo was added for ticket sales as was Mr. Garcia's even more brief appearance (3 or 4 seconds?) and the much hyped chemistry between Pratt and Lawrence is just more studio bullshit. Onscreen chemistry was zero.
The only plus to the whole thing was the superb visual effects.

[neorichieb1971]

Passengers (2016) - Morten Tyldum

Spoiler

A guy steals a life for his sole companionship.

The film then atempts to force itself into a matinee romance between the pair after this crime. The film is quite obviously broken. The script was in limbo since 2007 and is by Jon Spaihts who also wrote the script for Prometheus (2012).
Now, I dont know whether it was a shit script to begin with or if someone just decided to force this film into a fucking Milquetoast date film (which seems more likely given the choice of primary actors) but the dark themes quite clearly clash with the film we get to see.
Leading to even more confusion is the score. It is hard to remember a more ill-scored film (and its by Thomas Newman for God sake! and the score was nominated for an academy award ) What the fuck was going on here then? Action music played over tragic drama?
The whole debacle is schizophrenic in the extreme.
Mr. Fishburne's brief cameo was added for ticket sales as was Mr. Garcia's even more brief appearance (3 or 4 seconds?) and the much hyped chemistry between Pratt and Lawrence is just more studio bullshit. Onscreen chemistry was zero.
The only plus to the whole thing was the superb visual effects.

I watched the whole thing shouting "Wake more of them up". Was I the only one?

[xxx1993]

Finally got around to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Now Wonder Woman is next.

[Leandro]

How is the new Pirates?

[Skykid]

How is the new Pirates?

Surely better than Wonder Woman.

[Ixmucane2]

Wonder Woman

The destiny of princess Diana and the Amazons (as explained right at the beginning, they side with Zeus, creator and protector of man, against Ares, who brought war and discord to the world to prove humanity is bad) offers ample opportunity for reflections about war and history when World War I reaches their hidden island.

A decent "origin story" (although telling how someone trained from before birth to be a hero and defend mankind goes abroad to be a hero and defend mankind isn't much of a challenge), epic enough (the genocidal villain who would ordinarily represent the main enemy in the story is only a mundane warm up for the unavoidable confrontation with Ares), with inadequate attempts to be funny.

Chris Pine (allied spy and team leader) looks much like his interpretation of captain Kirk, just better dressed. Gal Gadot is more convincing as a relatively sexy action heroine than as a naive strange foreigner, two highly divergent sides of her incoherently written character.

[xxx1993]

I liked it. But I still look forward to Wonder Woman regardless.

[emphatic]

Just got back from Wonder Woman myself. My 12 year old daughter loved it, the 10 year old fell asleep! To me, it's a mixed bag of some really epic stuff bordering on hilarious campiness. 3/5, would watch again because Gal Godot is lovely to look at.

[GaijinPunch]

would watch again because Gal Godot is lovely to look at.

Makes me wish we weren't so prude about nudity.

[boagman]

"Alien: Covenant"

While I enjoyed the watch, for the most part, this was disappointingly by-the-numbers, I'd say. The characters have never, *ever* been as throwaway as they are here (including the once-more-for-the-peanut-gallery-generic Strong Female Protagonist You're Supposed To Root For And Relate To), and the "twist" at the end was so, so easy to see coming that M. Night Shyamalan probably watched this and exclaimed, "And people complain that *my* twists are easy to see coming?"

I enjoy the way Mr. Scott makes a movie, I admit. He really does his job well...but it's time to stop beating this dead horse. Decent, but certainly less satisfying than "Prometheus" to me, which I believe got an unfair amount of criticism.

[xxx1993]

Finally saw Wonder Woman! I'm all caught up to my movie schedule now. Next movie will be The Mummy.

[Skykid]

Finally saw Wonder Woman! I'm all caught up to my movie schedule now. Next movie will be The Mummy.

You're on a roll!

Have you gotten round to Citizen Kane yet, and if so what did you think?

[emphatic]

Have you gotten round to Citizen Kane yet, and if so what did you think?

He's waiting for the reboot starring Vin Diesel, surely.

[Skykid]

Have you gotten round to Citizen Kane yet, and if so what did you think?

He's waiting for the reboot starring Vin Diesel, surely.

Co-starring his black comedy sidekick cop, Rosebuddy.

[BrianC]

Sword in the Stone. Just as fun as I remembered. I love its take on Merlin with his constant anachronisms. Mad Madam Mim is a hoot, as well.

I have also been watching Columbo. Is that better suited for the TV topic? They were part of a movie block and are basically made for TV movies. I'm up to the newer movies, so far, they have been every bit as enjoyable as the original series, with the exception of Grand Deceptions, which was not very grand. I especially liked the episode where Columbo went up against a sex therapist.

[xxx1993]

Why would I wanna see Citizen Kane? So what if it's considered one of the best movies? Not my type.

[copy-paster]

Never did like pre-50's drama movies in general myself, and Citizen Kane is one of them.

Next movie will be The Mummy.

The newer or the old 1999 one?

[Skykid]

Why would I wanna see Citizen Kane? So what if it's considered one of the best movies? Not my type.

We know.

[Blinge]

^ *snort*

So, I recently read Dune. (first book)

So, I recently watched Dune. Christ on a bike that was offensively bad.
Felt like I was watching an A level film project.

[Skykid]

Never did like pre-50's drama movies in general myself, and Citizen Kane is one of them.

Citizen Kane is a 'pre-1950s "drama movie"'?

Lol

You guys are the reason they keep making superhero movies.

As an aside, I'd be very curious to know which pre-1950s drama movies you have actually seen, since you seem to have some experience in cinema of the era. Care to name a few with a brief critical appraisal of why you didn't like them? You know, so we can take you seriously.

[emphatic]

So, I recently watched Dune. Christ on a bike that was offensively bad.
Felt like I was watching an A level film project.

I haven't watched the theatrical version since the 80's, but this FanEdit was lovely: https://ifdb.fanedit.org/david-lynch-s- ... e-edition/

[soprano1]

Fantasia 2000 (1999)
The non-CG sequences were good. The first Fantasia is better just for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence.

[xxx1993]

Never did like pre-50's drama movies in general myself, and Citizen Kane is one of them.

Next movie will be The Mummy.

The newer or the old 1999 one?

The reboot starring Tom Cruise which will be released this Friday.

[BrianC]

I love older movies (drama and non-drama), myself. Maltese Falcon, Grand Hotel, Miracle on 34th Street, Night at the Opera, Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), A Christmas Carol 1938 (though I like the 1951 Alistair Sim one quite a bit too), Dumbo, Pinocchio, Casablanca, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Mark of Zorro, and Wizard of Oz, are all movies I enjoyed quite a bit.

The Mummy movie I'm most interested in seeing is the one with Boris Karloff.

[GaijinPunch]

How is the new Pirates?

Surely better than Wonder Woman.

Red Letter Media surprisingly seem to disagree. They gave it a solid "pretty good".

[soprano1]

The Mummy movie I'm most interested in seeing is the one with Boris Karloff.

Do watch it, it's great for Karloff's performance alone, he looks haunting as fuck.

[Zen]

The Master (2012) - Paul Thomas Anderson

Wonderful. Just a joy to experience film making of this calibre.
Very impressed to see that Anderson was also the writer here, as the script shows a nuanced understanding of the subject matter.
Was instantly impressed by the framing of the shots. Not to take anything away from Anderson's usual cinematographer, Robert Elswit but Mihai Malaimare behind the camera on this one paid off big time.
Joaquin Phoenix was fantastic (his physical interpretation of his character worked nicely), as was Philip Hoffman and Amy Adams played her role very well also.