The old movie thread: ratings and discussion' or some shiz

Splice - a recent sci fi horror...it's pretty ok! 7/10


finally saw Vanilla Sky - i liked it

 

PREDATORS

SCORE - 3/10

GENRE - SCIFI/ACTION

PREMISE - A group of tough killers scheduled for execution are unknowingly dropped on a remote planet. After banning together to try and figure out why, they realize they are being hunted by a team of Predators and must find a way to survive.

CRITIQUE - Horrible movie. I honestly tried to figure out a way to give it a higher score because a 3 seems too low but I couldn't think of any. Here's what I took from watching this movie: Someone came up with this premise and it was greenlit because honestly that's a pretty good premise. The problem is apparently nobody knew how to make a good movie out of it. They threw in some crap about 2 different types of Predators fighting against each other for whatever reason but never really went into it and it was obviously only done because they didn't know what else to do in the movie and hey, that's something right? Then you had Fishburn show up and take the movie in a totally unnecessary direction that did nothing to further the film or story. There is a scene where you think the hero stole the alien's ship and starts to fly away in it, so the alien blows the ship up and you think the hero is dead and it was kind of funny and cool at the same time. Only the hero was never actually in the ship. So why the fuck was the ship flying away, and why did the alien blow it up? Apparently they wanted to make a funny and cool scene even though it didn't make any sense. Arrgghh! Just stay away from this one, trust me.


SPLICE

SCORE - 5.5/10

GENRE - SCIFI/DRAMA

PREMISE - 2 bioscientist figure out a way to successfully splice DNA but aren't allowed to use their work on humans due to the law. They decide to proceed in secret and create a life with spliced human DNA. After initially planning to just see if it will work the experiment draws them in until they fall in love with the female creature they've created and named Dren.

CRITIQUE - Watchable movie, but nothing special. As a drama and a scifi film it wasn't that great but overall it kept my interest in a where's this going kind of way and it never got boring. Still I don't think I'd want to sit through it all again though there are some scenes I'd watch again such as the male scientist cheating on his wife with you guessed it the creature they made.



THE SOCIAL NETWORK

SCORE - 10/10

GENRE - DRAMA

PREMISE - A brilliant young Harvard nerd wants to get into the top social clubs and needs a way to bring attention to himself. After hacking the Harvard internet social network site he becomes infamous and is recruited by a couple of guys from one of the popular social clubs he wants to join to create a new better internet social network. After pretending to agree he instead decides to create his own internet social network and creates Facebook. He then gets sued by the 2 guys who recruited him as well as by his best friend who helped him finance Facebook. Yeah he was kind of a dick.

CRITIQUE - A good movie that once again proves dramas are the best films going because you can't BS your way through it with novelties like costumes, CGI, nudity, or special effects. With dramas your story IS your novelty. Besides the story itself, what made this good was the intelligence of the main character and how he'd occassionally going on long winded rants and totally butcher people with his words. Also the legal meetings and flashbacks that helped piece the story together were very good as well as great performances from pretty much all the main characters. You didn't totally root against the guys who were suing him because like I said the main guy was a dick and they were never made out to be bad guys. It was more like you were shown things from their perspective. I recommend this one if you enjoy drama films that contain nothing more than dialogue. If you need guys sliding down ropes with one arm and shooting a gun with the other, or giant laser-sword wielding robots then you should probably stay away.

Honorable mention to - Justin Timberlake for his outstanding portrayl as the guy who created Napster. He was kind of a prick too.

 

Paranormal Activity (first one).

I'm a pussy when it comes to 'realistic' horror films (Blair Witch terrified me 1st time round), and my first go at watching this saw me turn it off after about 15 mins. I stuck it back on the next evening and watched it through. It was decent and had some great moments, but overall it wasn't so bad.

I was more interested in the story of the film and the 3 alternate endigns (the one i saw was the origninal ending).

 

LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE

SCORE - 2/10

GENRE - BIO/ACTION/DRAMA

PREMISE - Tells the life story of Bruce Lee whilst eschewing actual facts throughout about 80% of the film and basically adding a fictional aspect by having Lee seek, challenge and fight several different martial arts masters in order to improve his own style. They also have him competing in a world karate championship. Before finally covering his acting career.

CRITIQUE - Horrible movie with lots of wasted potential. For instance the star looked like Lee, and the fight scenes were pretty darned good which is where the film earned it's one point with me. Other than that though it was abort viewing material and the only reason I kept watching was curiosity as a fan and the need to give a detailed critique on how horrible it was. The biggest ruination of the film was the horrible voice over acting and horrible corny dialogue both of which often contained unintentional comedy. The film was 3 hours long to boot and although they'd occasionally show things many never knew of Lee such as him winning the cha cha championship or passing out on the set of Enter The Dragon and not knowing why, their was far too much fictional crap thrown in. For instance just like the film Dragon The Bruce Lee story they had Bruce Lee injure his back after a sneak attack by a guy he defeated in order to keep teaching non-Chinese or how he kept fighting different masters to improve his art. That stuff lasted so long that by 2 hours in I'd figured it was a fictional movie and they weren't even going to touch on his life as a film star but then they finally did. All that stuff though is just window dressing, the dialogue and voice overs are what make the film unwatchable even for a guy like me who used to be an avid Bruce Lee fan. Just trust me and stay away from this because I suffer so you don't have to.

 

Thank you for the warning.As a Bruce Lee fan I was curious about this tv series, but the clips I watched at youtube looked like another crappy ripoff. Your review just comfirmed this.

 

It was a tv series?

 

Machete
Incredible that such a fug like Danny Trejo gets to bang it out with Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, and Lindsay Lohan all in the same movie. This movie was very fun and is definitely worth a watch. Great cast include all of the above as well as Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, and Jeff Fahey (the pilot from Lost). Fahey was excellent in this BTW.

See it!

8/10

 

i saw that new movie with russell crowe

it's pretty alright

 

Hereafter

The family's bi-monthly trip to the movie theater. I wanted to see "127 Hours", but it wasn't playing in my area, so we defaulted my wife's option of "Hereafter".

I wasn't totally disappointed with her choice. I figured Matt Damon's in it, Clint Eastwood must have a couple more decent movies left in him and the trailer was pretty cool.

Opening scene - The Tsunami we see in the trailer. Very cool scene. I start to get excited. Clint doesn't normally work with special effects. Nice to see him try his hand at something other then the background CGI we saw in "Flags Of Our Fathers".

Then............................nothing. This is what Clint does lately........point, shoot, act, next scene, that's a wrap, edit, hand it in.......done.

Sometimes it works, in this case, it doesn't even come close. It's really noble of Clint to want to finish movies quickly and come in under budget. This shows what happens when you blow your entire budget on one scene for the trailer, and don't really care much about the rest. I can see Clint yelling at his editors............"Just get it in the fuckin' can, boys.........just get it in the can".

This is just a long ass boring mess that seemed about an hour longer then it actually was. My wife, who's a sucker for this sentimental, afterlife mumbo jumbo nonsense, leaned over to me after the movie was over, told me it was the worst movie she had seen in a long time, and apologized for picking it out. I laughed out loud in the movie theatre, because I thought I was going to have to pretend to like it, for my wife's sake. ::

Clint deserves to be panned for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they dig this up for award season, just because he's Clint.

Disappointing

3/10

:Ramonza:

 

The Killer Inside Me

Pretty enjoyable film noir. Kind of a poor man's cross between "American Psycho" and "No Country For Old Men".

Worth seeing for Casey Affleck's performance alone.

Could have been lots better. Too many characters fluttering in and out of the story with not much explanation of their existence.

I wondered if many of the events happening were only happening in the psychotic mind of the main character and not in the reality of the situation we were presented with.

They never really clued us in whether that was the case or not.

Had a pretty ridiculous ending.


6.5/10

 

Miniseries from Hong Kong, yes.

 

i did not enjoy that movie at all.

 

I remember the first time I saw that trailer I thought it looked like a convoluted mess and I had no desire to see it. It almost seemed to want to be a poor man's sixth sense.

By the way you shouldn't have to pretend to like a movie for your wife's sake. IMO it's important that you're both honest with each other when it comes to movies, (amongst other things) because you need to be able to thoroughly judge each other's taste which you won't be able to do if you fib a bit to spare each other's feelings. I mean it's not like she wrote it or directed it right? And trailers can sometimes be misleading.

 

Aside from him whupping Jessica Alba's ass with a belt.

That part gave me a woody.

 

LOL! Thanks for the relationship advice. We know each others tastes pretty well, I just don't rub it in her face when one of her picks suck, unless she cops to it right away. ::

 

i saw a horror called Mirrors 2

dissapointing cos the first one is awesome..but this one sucked and they even brought in some actors i had heard of

 

Faster---8 out of 10---The Rock finally gets a good role and delivers. Story was pretty standard but well done considering that.

 

The first Mirrors was TERRIBLE! Easily one of the worst horror movies ever made.

 

Don't know if you missed it or what but Grindiron Gang was a damn good role and the Rock delivered.

 

8 out of 10 ? Are you crazy? I watched it at best and I mean if you really had a great day and were in a great mood and all that you could give this movie is 6/10 and that is pushing it. Pushing it hard.

 

For real? I thought Mirrors was pretty good. I am a big Jack Bauer fan though.

 

For a revenge movie, Faster is pretty standard, nothing special there. i gave it a 4/10.

 

what are your fave revenge movies, o?

 

So I finally bit the bullet and watched:



Clash of the Titans - 3 out of 10

Now I am going to spoil the shit out of this film so please don't read if you were planning on watching this.
-----------------------------------------------


Unsuprisingly, I didn't like it. Don't get me wrong, the action scenes were mostly good. The monsters looked good and the Gods and Perseus himself again looked good. Some of the effects for Hades were fantastic and the Kraken itself was sufficiently huge. Had they stuck with a close storyline facsimile of the 1981 film, this could have been a great flick.

I recommend the 1981 adaptation to anyone who thought this might have been a good story. That film is very, very dated now so don't expect overmuch in the 'effects' department but it has a much more coherent storyline and is better acted (with some exceptions).

The 2010 film really falls down due to the story they've decided to try and tell and some mind bafflingly stupid decisions in general. I understand the whole Men vs Gods angle and it could really make for a good story or series of stories but the myth of Perseus is perhaps the single WORST choice to adapt to that storyline.

The film Troy, while not being great was at least better suited to having most of the God angle removed from it. Perseus is a demi-god gifted with a helm, shield and sword DIRECTLY FROM THE ZEUS HIMSELF. The Pantheon in general meddle almost daily in Perseus' life to the point where they bicker over it amongst themselves. They are shown meteing out judgement on humans whilst displaying the same flawed emotions and motivations we have. It's actually a huge part of the story and they underuse it or remove it utterly.

Pegasus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Thetis and Calibos. Boy did these characters get the ol' shaftola. The flying horse shows up in this film almost unannounced and helps Perseus for no reason at all except that the story demanded it. Andromeda has about 2 speaking lines the whole film (more on her later). I actually didn't hate what they did with the origin of Calibos but he was very underused and had a much better arc in the first film.

Onto Andromeda. The single reason for the entire story is for Perseus to rescue Andromeda from the Kraken. It's the ancient tale of the commoner winning the heart of the princess and going through fire to get her in the end. A tale told a thousand times? Sure. It's also one of the most powerful motivations in the human condition. Perseus saves Andromeda and becomes King eventually. Trite but a fitting end to the tale.

So imagine my surprise when they remove the romantic arc from Perseus and Andromeda altogether. Strange choice I thought but the failure was compounded when they CREATED A NEW ONE with a character they pulled from their asses. To rephrase, they removed an existing romantic arc for their main character, one that made sense and made the race to defeat the Kraken all that more crucial and made a new one with a new character that effectively does NOTHING THE WHOLE FUCKING FILM. Why the hell does that character even exist?

Other new editions to the film that were completely redundant:
The guy that looked like he was made of wood. I referred to him as Captain Teak or as my friend called him: Cedarman. What the fuck these guys were in the film for is beyond me. It's a Greek myth, why can't we just have Greeks vs fantastic monsters? Really silly addition.

Hades. Hades takes the place of Poseidon in this film, probably because you can't have God without Satan. Honestly did they have to homogenize the Pantheon this way? Do they really believe audiences are that stupid? Basically changed the Greek myth to a bastardised Christian story. Why is that a bad thing? Because it means I have to put the following guy in the redundant section:

The Kraken. How can the main monster be here? Because of the stupid decision to make Hades the main villain. The death of the Kraken is supposed to be the crowning moment of this film. Everything leads up to it and it's over in about 2 minutes. No shit, less than a minute after the Kraken dies, Hades is sent back to hell. LESS THAN A MINUTE. It's like the director went: "Shit! I only have 5 minutes left to finish up. I won't cut out Cedarman or the pointless religious zealot, I'll just make Hades appear and get dispatched in less than 10 seconds and put that less than one minute after Perseus defeats the Kraken. Excellent. God, I'm awesome."

Terrible effort caused by too much meddling in what is a fairly simple and well paced story. They removed some shit like the whole Bubo section(who made an appearance in this one. Maybe 5 people per showing would have made that connection) which needed pruning but then added too much crap in an effort to modernise something which did not require it.

 

I saw The Fighter last night. It's entertaining and the family drama scenes are the best parts of the movie, especially scenes featuring Christian Bale. The boxing scenes were dissapointing, just your typical movie boxing fare with those stupid sound effects when a punch lands. They also reffered to Shea Neary as "the welterweight champion of the world". I don't rememberWard getting knocked down and being nearly out on his feet in that fight, and that's how it was shown in the movie.

Christian Bale was great as Dick Ecklund, he's the favorite for the best supporting actor oscar I think.

 

TRON: Legacy Like the first film it is visually gorgeous. Like the first film it lacks a compelling story or one that makes any sense even within a science fiction premise. Like the first film its characters are cardboards of whom you don't give a damn if they perish. Unlike the first film which was a pioneer for the computer generated images,this one doesn't push the envelope in any direction. Like the Jeff Bridges character "Flynn" says more than once in the film "the best course of action is to do nothing' it feels like this was the motto of the filmmakers. And about the hyped 3D version...once the film is about to start it comes with this WARNING: "this 3D film has scenes in 2D which were filmed in 2D and it was intended to be viewed in that format". Translation: "we are making apologies for not delivering AVATAR-like 3D effects and instead you'll get 'Clash-of-the-Titans' crappy effects! If you want to watch this film go for the regular 2D version. It will be cheaper and you'll not miss anything. The only rewarding aspect of this film is to see again the chick from WATCHMEN in another catsuit costume. The motion capture young Jeff Bridges looks awesome except when he talks: more than once his lips don't synch with his words (they should have call James Cameron and ask him, 'dude, can you gives a hand here?" The theater were I watched this film was half empty. There were more people buying tickets for Yogi Bear than for this one. Oh, and why call a movie TRON when that character barely makes an appeareance in the film? How did Flynn and the whole 'programs' world can exist in a computer that was turned off for 25 years? Only because it is visually gorgeous and the music was good I'll give it a 5/10

 

cape fear, get carter (yah, the caine one) are some good ones.

tarantino's got a hardon for making "the arechtypal revenge movie", but it's hard to take the noughties QT seriously. you never for a minute feel any kind of emotional connection with the bride's revenge ambition. on the other hand, watching the two jews pump machine gun lead into hitler until he becomes jelly is pretty compelling.

oldboy's cool for being unusual, but it's a bit too much east asian gross-out excess.

token high-culture inclusion: branagh's hamlet. olivier's is all freudian so the revenge motive is slightly understated. (see guv, my grammar school place wasn't a complete waste, honest.)

 

which cape fear. I love the scene in the newer one where DeNiro is laughing his ass of at the theatre.

Another legendary DeNiro laugh can be seen at 6:30 of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwABMWRm0c

 

the new one, 'cos you actually sympathise with the revenger.

i highlighted that de niro laugh to you, a few years back.

 

The Goodfellas one? I don't remember, I remember you posting the scene of him smoking and plotting to kille everyone. I saw the movie last week, DeNiro is the king of the small moments in film. I loved his expression when he was kicking the shit out of Billy Bats, or when Morrie comes up to hassle him about the money at the bar at Christmas time.