Movies you've just watched

[drauch]

Just imported the Bluray of that from the UK. I'll hafta watch it this week!

[BIL]

I like that fiml a lot, Eric Roberts is good in it too I think, much as I love Best Of The Best, it's a pity Roberts is more remembered for that than Runaway Train.

Yeah, I thought he and Jon Voight were both excellent. I'd wondered if Voight was hamming it up a bit, but once the hardman facade starts crumbling real torment and regret abounds, and it clashes with Roberts' almost childlike enthusiasm brilliantly.

Also, I knew I'd seen John P. Ryan playing an authoritarian hardass with a sadistically humorous streak somewhere before this (turned out to be Class of 1999). His debut scene, striding through a raging riot without so much as a helmet while his armoured-up men cower behind him, is iconic. Great nemesis. He also

Spoiler

redeemed the weak link of the rail staff segments when he stomped the shit out of programmer boffin guy. When the latter chewed him out and left the room to "take a leak" I was thinking "if they don't have the warden stomp this guy's ass..." then BOOM! Stall kicked in, face in the bowl!

"Wipe that piss off your face."

edit: Oh also, I don't really keep up on this stuff, but apparently Peter Jackson's recent Donkey Kong Country: Banana Bumfuck trilogy has been recut by a fan into a single 4hr film "teh tolkien edit." Thanks telegraph website for ddl ROFL. I watched it tonight and thought it worked ok as a sort of TV miniseries thing. Whole swathes of crap cut out! Apparently. I've not watched any of the individual films.

[Ixmucane2]

Exodus: Gods and Kings (Ridley Scott)

Shockingly bad: an attempt to tell a story from the Bible without an ounce of religion nor understanding of religion, trying and failing to turn the life of Moses into a miserable combination of action movie and standard "character development".
This work demonstrates enough incompetence and insensitivity to allow appreciation as a subtle and provoking satire of Hollywood culture and of modern ways to be stupid (except of course, that unlike Tropic Thunder it is completely involuntary).

It's wrong enough to need multiple lists of problems.

Supernatural elements

• Moses is a guy who begins having divine visions after his head is hit by a rock, carefully maintaining ambiguity between brain damage-induced schizophrenia and really speaking with God.
• The visions themselves represent God (or more likely an angel) as a very creepy child, with a disturbing lack of awe.
• The plagues are also treated with deliberate ambiguity, even including debates about their "obvious" natural causes. Except that, of course, the sudden death of Egyptian children cannot be anything but a miracle, and the ambiguity falls apart.
• The parting of the Red Sea is ambiguously attributed to aberrant weather and tides. Moses is disgustingly passive in this occasion; he isn't prophet enough to command the waters, he simply sleeps on the beach and finds the sea retiring the morning after.

Religion

• God is represented as an unfathomably psychopathic supervillain who suddenly decides to play a rigged game of Jews vs Egyptians. Moses positively dislikes Him.
• The last warning from Moses to Ramses is more a desperate attempt to join forces "against" God than an ultimatum.
• The main feelings animating Moses are guilt and duty towards his people, not faith; he sincerely wants to liberate Jews, but he would clearly prefer a mundane, military approach. So would Ridley Scott, clearly starved for violent scenes.
• Moses is, above all, a hero with great responsibilities, not a religious leader. Jews are a mass of obedient followers, content to leave their place of slavery; the tale skips all coverage of their religion, and their difficult relationship with Moses, opting for showing only Moses writing down the Commandments, then old and close to the Promised Land.
• For example, the Ark of the Covenant appears briefly as a humble looking box in a van. No mention of its importance, it's only a box.

Cultural dissonance

• Moses infiltrates the pharaoh's palace in the middle of the night, finds Ramses alone and makes demands, pointing a sword to his throat as a rhetorical aid. No sword has has ever looked so much like a handgun to the head; we are fortunately spared killed sentinels and the like but not the gangster movie attitude.
• Moses gets married, and his marriage is very respectful and egalitarian; an example of how repressed 21st century liberals should want to behave with women. The scenes are brief but incredible, a neutron star of hyperdense political correctness.
• The film introduces Moses and Ramses as adults, showing off in a fairly long and brutal battle scene (mostly chariots); further gratuitous and morbid action scenes include crocodiles eating people on a boat and very bad chariot accidents when Ramses exceeds the common sense speed limit while chasing the Jews to the Red Sea.
• In their final confrontation, Moses and Ramses need to prove they are badass: what better way than stopping in the middle of the Red Sea, on horseback, to play chicken with the flood wave? It appears to make some sense at first, but they do nothing until the pipeline closes on them.
• Middle eastern fanatic terrorists training in their secret bases in the desert, just like right now! Without Kalashnikov rifles, the Jewish militia has a lot of archery exercises (being the good guys, in an inspiring training montage).
• Echoes of Nazi persecutions of Jews, with standard situations like cruel executions and whole worried families hiding under a trapdoor during a police search.

Mise en scene

• A dishonorable mention for architecture: pyramids and sphinxes are distributed randomly, mostly huddled together to fit in the frame; ridiculously huge statues stand unfinished for years; bricks are mentioned but apparently not used to build the miserable misshapen hovels of poor Jews.
• There should be plenty of ethnically appropriate actors, but Egyptians and Jews are mostly light-skinned with grey or blue eyes. Egyptians also include a few black extras (quotas?), while Hittites are completely random.
• Moses inexplicably fights with a decorative, good looking bronze sword. Did they take "Bronze Age" too literally?
• Stupid exaggerated special effects; computer graphics can clearly blunt creativity. Instead of putting a few real frogs in the Queen's bed, they draw hundreds (she clearly has a deep sleep); instead of showing people worrying about dead fish, they draw dead fish up to the horizon; the waters of the Red Sea look like a large tsunami (I estimate 40 meters or more, a bigger one is equally expensive), but the Jews prove surprisingly able to stick to the far shore.

[drauch]

Exodus: Gods and Kings (Ridley Scott)

Shockingly bad: an attempt to tell a story from the Bible without an ounce of religion nor understanding of religion, trying and failing to turn the life of Moses into a miserable combination of action movie and standard "character development".

Did you not see the trailer?

[EmperorIng]

Scott has used up all the good will that Alien and Blade Runner gave him. I don't even think Legend was all that good outside of the swamp hag scene

[drauch]

Yeah, not a fan of Legend myself. Tim Curry is amazing in it, but it's a bit too heavy on the silly kiddy crap for this hardened bastard.

Scott typically gets it sorta rough for directing two of the biggest sci-fit hits of all time, but he's still got a lot of good films that most people seem to overlook like The Duellists, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, and Black Hawk Down. Still need to see Someone to Watch Over Me, but it sounds groovy.

[JBC]

I'm even kind of down on him now after Prometheus. It wasn't as bad of a movie as many people say, but it was no Alien. I'm finally gonna admit my biggest nitpick with that movie - The 'Engineer'. I mean... for decades I'm watching Alien repeatedly & wondering what this enigmatic anteater/elephant looking alien pilot is all about. Turns out, oh - that's just a helmet. They are really giant bald über-humans. Oh, & btw they are God & made us.

Kinda takes the 'alien' out of Alien when the xenomorphs aren't even a naturally occurring lifeform from another world, but rather an engineered biological weapon of the most convoluted kind. Uhm, why not engineer a virus we can't fight? Why destroy a dangerous populous on a world you would like to seed with an even more dangerous one? One shown to be just as much (if not more) capable of f-ing the Engineer's sh*t up as we are. There's no logic behind it. Instead it comes off as a pretentious excuse to ooh & ahh the audience.

I liked 'Space Jockey' just fine, however silly a space elephant may seem. My original assumption was that he was of an alien race which had picked up a cargo of exotic beasts on another planet & things got out of control during transport. The Jockey lands his ship on Acheron/LV-426 & activates a warning beacon to let his people know not to come there. Bam, makes sense. Seems plausible.

All that said, I'll still see the sequel if it ever gets made but as far as I'm concerned they may as well go ahead & do Engineers Vs Predator & stick a fork in it.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I'm even kind of down on him now after Prometheus. It wasn't as bad of a movie as many people say, but it was no Alien. I'm finally gonna admit my biggest nitpick with that movie - The 'Engineer'. I mean... for decades I'm watching Alien repeatedly & wondering what this enigmatic anteater/elephant looking alien pilot is all about. Turns out, oh - that's just a helmet. They are really giant bald über-humans. Oh, & btw they are God & made us.

Kinda takes the 'alien' out of Alien when the xenomorphs aren't even a naturally occurring lifeform from another world, but rather an engineered biological weapon of the most convoluted kind. Uhm, why not engineer a virus we can't fight? Why destroy a dangerous populous on a world you would like to seed with an even more dangerous one? One shown to be just as much (if not more) capable of f-ing the Engineer's sh*t up as we are. There's no logic behind it. Instead it comes off as a pretentious excuse to ooh & ahh the audience.

I liked 'Space Jockey' just fine, however silly a space elephant may seem. My original assumption was that he was of an alien race which had picked up a cargo of exotic beasts on another planet & things got out of control during transport. The Jockey lands his ship on Acheron/LV-426 & activates a warning beacon to let his people know not to come there. Bam, makes sense. Seems plausible.

All that said, I'll still see the sequel if it ever gets made but as far as I'm concerned they may as well go ahead & do Engineers Vs Predator & stick a fork in it.

Yes, Mr. Scott has said that he plans to do the next Promethus sequel down the road + a remake of Blade Runner as well. What is not mentioned/depicted in the 1982 BR film, are the huge factories that construct the Replicants -- surely this will be shown in the remake, right? Makes me wonder what they truly look like without the usual "skin job" mounted on afterwards.

On a related sci-fi movie topic, director James Cameron still hasn't come up with a workable Avatar sequel script and thus, the 2nd Avatar film sequel has been further delayed until sometime in 2017 (rather than a late December 2016 planned theatrical release as originally intended). Go figure.....

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Mischief Maker]

Man, Trekkies put all other nerds to shame, the way they banded together and unanimously declared Star Trek V non-cannon.

[boagman]

On a related sci-fi movie topic, director James Cameron still hasn't come up with a workable Avatar sequel script and thus, the 2nd Avatar film sequel has been further delayed until sometime in 2017 (rather than a late December 2016 planned theatrical release as originally intended). Go figure.....

Well, to be fair, there was never a workable script for the original, either...

[JBC]

Just watched Django Unchained again but this time with my dad. He laughed his ass off. It's such a wild ride when the gunfights break out. Makes me wish we still got light gun arcades for all the big action movies. Can you imagine one based on this movie The language would have soccer moms dragging their children away from the arcade

EDIT - Also, I'm about to watch The Raid 2. Hope it's at least as good as the first!

EDIT 2 - The Raid 2 was excellent. I actually like it better than the first. It surprisingly dares to break formula & not regulate the film to one day, one location. I was sort of expecting a total repeat but instead got a more traditional action martial arts flick. The first film's premise is good, but to reuse it would be like eating leftovers of a great meal a month after you put it in the fridge. The mood is consistently dreary throughout & I really loved some of the shots. That kitchen fight was just grand.

[BIL]

John Wick flashy, enjoyable mob revenge flick with a couple issues. First is minor - the blaring caulk raulk / pumpin choonz soundtrack occasionally gets way out of line. Second is bigger - the actual vengeance is weaksauce. Twice! I was surprised, given the fire in Keanau's belly when he said mob boss would die screaming alongside his son. Look, here is a basic example of getting back at the guy who killed your dog. Wicky gets back like a surgeon on a dodgy mole. Impressive skill lacking viscera. Ironically it's his mowing down an army of random hired help that salvages things. He drive and shoot real good like and he really ragin as fuck, just not where he needs to the most! Loved all the mozambique drillin goin' on. Boom boom! Boom! Take that, random henchman #53466!

[jonny5]

Blue Ruin (2014)

Without spoiling anything, if there's a movie that proves how pointless and consequence inducing taking out a revenge on someone is, it's this one. It's a slow, ambient movie that sparks like a volcano during it's tense moments. It's gonna be stuck in my head for a bit.

Watched this last night. Awesome stuff. Brilliantly filmed and acted. Quite impressive for an indie film.

[Ixmucane2]

Did you not see the trailer?

The trailer for Exodus suggests an unremarkable mediocre Hollywood rendition of a classic story, so I allowed myself to be dragged to watch it.
After seeing the trailer, I joked that Astérix: Le domaine des dieux would have been a much better choice; after seeing the film, my friends agreed.

I consider really terrible entertainment a valuable learning opportunity; films like Exodus (worst of the season) or Pianosequenza (worst ever) reveal one's vague aesthetic assumptions and break new ground (albeit in the wrong direction).

[Xyga]

Interstellar

Bits of good and bad glued together.

At least for once in a Nolan movie the long hours are busy-enough with the main plot/action and not just boring chatty stuff.

Many things are really too far-fetched though, to a facepalming level even. I like the 'idea', but 20th century sci-fi film makers knew how to tell ridiculous stories well, in the 21st century they have lost that ability.

One thing that was a bit of a disappointment is the somewhat claustrophobic depiction of space travel, it's rarely grandiose and often only parts/bits are shown so the 'wow stars' is a bit spoiled.

And the robot's voices...er...no.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The CG four-dimensional Tetrasect scene shown in the recent Interstellar sci-fi flick took about a year to create from the ground up according to the latest issue of Cinefex magazine. Some of the miniature spaceship props were huge and detailed sets upon glossing through some of the pics provided courtesy of Cinefex magazine.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Ed Oscuro]

Get Carter:

Watch the droopy blokes in the far center window at 46:06 in a night scene where Carter pulls up in the foreground.

[EmperorIng]

Any fans of Italian trash have any opinions on 1990: The Bronx Warriors and its sequel, Escape from the Bronx?

[drauch]

Weird. Wrote this earlier tonight on a different forum:

If you dig Castellari and post-nuke films, then you're in for a treast. If not, you'd be a damned fool! 1990: The Bronx Warriors is the weakest of the lot, but still good stuff. The sequel, Escape From the Bronx, is one of the best Italian films of the genre. Very heavy on the action. Warriors of the Wasteland has George Eastman in a super homoerotic role as a lead bad guy against an amazing cast. Some of the best offerings from the genre in my opinion.

[EmperorIng]

I love fast responses!

I remember really liking Warriors of the Wasteland back when I watched it yeeears ago. It was extremely gay, but that was part of the fun! That and Fred Williamson makes any movie good. Well, maybe not Children of the Corn 5, but there was little that could be done.

I've heard many similar praises of Escape; I'm just worried that 1990 might have too many boring stretches - though I admit that I have a fondness for Vic Morrow (as well as the other real actors in the movie as well).

[drauch]

I'm in need of a rewatch for 1990: Bronx Warriors, but it's still good stuff if you like that sort of thing. Marc Gregory was awesome, then just completely disappeared from movies and nobody could find him. His Thunder Warrior films are cool, too; they're kind of like a Native American version of Rambo.

[Ed Oscuro]

Good rollup of Get Carter's theatrical posters here. Interesting film - glad I stuck with it to the end. And the poster is much better than that for the US Get Carter - of the era, not the Stallone one - Hit Man. It's also better than the poster for Hit Man. Poor Marvin - dead of a cancer that caused him to grow a fist and loaded pistol out the back of his head.

I feel I might like these Italian films better

[CMoon]

Yeah, I have the soundtrack to Get Carter and it includes that poster. I get sick of falling into the 'why don't they make movies like this anymore' trap, but seeing a few posts talking about Get Carter and Point Blank lead me to that destination regardless.

[GaijinPunch]

Blue Ruin.

Holy fuck.

[BIL]

The Medusa Touch (1978) Competent, initially intriguing but ultimately lukewarm psychic mystery. Richard Burton's misanthropic loner believes he is causing tragedy and disaster worldwide with the power of his mind. Someone agrees and smashes his head in, roping our protagonist World-Weary French Detective into the story.

Way overlong at nearly two hours, with prosaic direction throughout. First two thirds are devoted to autobiographical vignettes of self-professed psychic asshole, followed by a finale too heavily telegraphed to carry any suspense. Burton's sorrowful intensity and peerless death gaze redeem things slightly, and there are some decent practical effects at the bloody climax. Would've likely been a more interesting movie had it spent more time in Burton's character's head and less tediously detailing his past.

[Some-Mist]

all yesterday...
watched interstellar last night and really enjoyed it. I kind of want to watch it again which makes me feel as if I enjoyed it more than gravity (which I one-and-done'd).

also watched guardians of the galaxy for the first time which now replaces watchmen as my favorite super hero movie.

lastly, watched nightcrawler a 2nd time (roommate hasn't seen it) and I fell asleep about 75% the way through, and I still wasn't too enthralled.

[JBC]

Tusk. I normally dislike Kevin Smith but this is a new low.

Don't try to justify it to me. I get it, it's just not good.

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

The Interview. What an awful movie. I'm convinced that the studio needed that elaborate of a publicity scheme to get people to see this turd.

[DEL]

Fat City (1972)
Jeff Bridges and Stacey Keach in a down n'out boxing movie.
Normally Bridges steals the show, but Stacey Keach won this bout.

The Puppet Masters (1994)
Donald Sutherland, Keith David.
Turns out that this is the original story (Heinlein) for the current series Falling Skies and a bit of trivia is that I noticed:- it stars two of the same actors - Will Patton and Dale Dye, who "served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1967 through 1970, surviving 31 major combat operations. He emerged from Southeast Asia with numerous decorations, including a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Heart medals for wounds suffered in combat."
(The captain from Platoon).

[BIL]

The Equalizer: wanted a low-fi vigilante fantasy, got a superhero movie. Not a bad one at all, but Denzel's globe-spanning omnipotence and relative detachment from his targets gives little of the intensity or catharsis I enjoy from stuff like Dirty Harry and Taken. By the point EQ was nonchalantly locking himself in a DIY store barehanded with a squad of former Spetsnaz I was almost feeling sorry for the poor assholes, though they certainly deserved barbed-wire garotting as much as anyone. Fun (if a bit overlong) ride with some brutal kills and a great sense of escalation as ever bigger fish run head-on into the invincible murder machine that is EQ, but it lacks the passion of a great vigilante revenging.

Not that it's a particularly great movie, but Law Abiding Citizen did this Punisher-style superheroic vigilante concept better with genuine tragedy, a fuck ton more fury and a decent bit of moral challenge. OTOH if you just want to see baddies get murdered with improbable skill by invincible former military man, this'll do for an evening.