The Movie Thread

[FullAuto]

The Girl Who Played with Fire. Not as good as Dragon Tattoo, but still good! Why on Earth they're being remade is beyond me. The two leads are perfect, and it's going to be a shame to see these stories retold, in generic locations with actors less-suited to the roles.

 

Good on you, Sweden.

[chiasaur11]

So, who all is seeing Scott Pilgrim?

 

Looks good. Comic's good, song is good, game looks good...

 

Yeah. Bit excited.

[FullAuto]

I don't like Cera much (give me Jesse Eisenberg instead), but Wright has yet to direct a bad film, and from the trailer it looks like it will be either very bad, or very good.

 

*crosses fingers*

[chiasaur11]

Ever read the books?

 

Entertaining as they come. Increases enthusiasm, generally.

[FullAuto]

I have not. I've been catching up on my Walking Dead/The Losers/The Boys/Punisher, lately. I shall have to search them out.

 

Dead Ringers. It's directed by David Cronenberg, so you know it's going to be freaky. Although it starts out a little strange, with identical twin gynaecologists (both played by Jeremy's Iron), it gets very mental as one twin falls in love, turns to drugs, and begins to fantasise about mutant cervixes. It's downhill from there. Great film, if you can stand it.

[chiasaur11]

Okay.

 

Saw Pilgrim.

 

All my poor high expectations, cut down in their prime.

 

The film...

 

It was too GOOD for them.

 

Holy cow, this film is the future. Even if it flops at the box office, a decade from now this will be one of the touchstones, the films everyone will be emulating.

 

And if the directorial tricks were all it had going? Still a good film. They aren't.

 

The gags are brilliant, the comic is expertly emulated, Cera is good for the role, everyone in the whole film is quite good, and the music is remarkable.

 

Looks like it'll flop at the box office, but you all owe it to yourselves to see this.

 

Truly remarkable.

[FullAuto]

Faithful to the source material, by any chance?

 

The Expendables. A manly film for manly men with penises. Dodgy acting, good action. Dolph Lundgren, at times, borders on the incomprehensible. But there's shooting, explosions, fights, explosions, some attractive women, shooting and explosions. It's also very funny in places (sometimes even intentionally).

[FullAuto]

Black Death. A brutal, effective horror film that takes a look at religion and fundamentalism in Britain during guess what plague. Quite nasty in places, though never actually that gory. Sean Bean does a good turn. In fact, there's not a bad performance present, just one or two unexpected faces.

[Azrael Strife]

Watched Inception last night. It's been long since I saw a movie as entertaining and thrilling as this. The ending was too open for my liking, but the movie was so great, I just did not care.

[FullAuto]

Centurion. Er, bit of a weird one, this, as it's from the Roman point of view? How are we supposed to empathise with a bunch of oppressors? It's a bit bizarre. "Hey, savages, you're going to be part of our empire and you're going to like it." It'd be like empathising with the Empire in Star Wars. "Mmm, yeah, these rebels really do need subjugating."

 

The plot details the wiping out of the Ninth Legion and the adventures of the few survivors, but all throughout the film I had the odd feeling that the characters should get caught and killed. If the film's meant to show that whatever the war, the soldiers of the opposing sides are all human, etc etc, it fails miserably, as the Picts are all out and out bad types, and aside from one character or two, the Romans are all good guys.

 

Surely it's not meant to be an Afghanistan/Iraq allegory? I do hope not. If it's just meant to be a brainless actioner, fair enough, it's got some good violence and Neil Marshall shoots a good action scene.

[FullAuto]

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

 

Genius. Sheer genius. There's barely a minute of the film that is not excellent. There are jokes all over the place, visual and audio gags non-stop, the filming and editing is relentlessly inventive, the acting is good, the comic timing bang-on. A comic book on film. Amazing.

[FullAuto]

The King of Kong. What happens when extremely talented serial underachiever Steve Wiebe takes on the gamer equivalent of Chuck Norris, Billy Mitchell, in a competition to get the world record on the original Donkey Kong? You'd think setting a high score would be fairly straightforward. You'd be wrong. Scheming, backstabbing, mind games, lies, feuds that go back decades, it's unbelievable. If you've ever set, tried to set, or wanted to set a high score, you should watch this.

[FullAuto]

MacGruber. Gloriously stupid (and sometimes funny) parody of MacGyver, about a moron who can't improvise anything correctly taking on the brilliant villain von Cunth, played perfectly by Val Kilmer. Retarded.

 

Taught me the wonderful phrase 'upper decker'. This is where you use someone's toilet, but instead of the bowl, you do your business in the toilet's water tank. Genius.

[FullAuto]

Four Lions. A group of radicalised incompetents determine that they will take up arms (well, explosives) and blow themselves up in the name of Islam, if they can work out how. I pissed myself laughing through most of this film. More Dad's Army than War on Terror. Suicide crows, invisible jihadists, sheep martyrdom, and buying nukes for Israel through the purchase of Jaffa oranges. Spat tea everywhere.

[FullAuto]

Blue Steel is an early Kathryn Bigelow effort (Near Dark, Point Break, The Hurt Locker) featuring possible-man Jamie Lee Curtis. Of variable quality, but sometimes very tense, Curtis plays rookie cop taking on a nutter. Plenty of slow motion and gun fetishism. I quite like it, even if it is dodgy in places.

[Pete]

Watched Orange County last night - great film, nothing to complain about and a bit feel-good to boot. Plenty of great cameos (Harold Ramis, Kevin Kline, Chevy Chase and others). Not too much Jack Black either, which is a good thing as he annoys the tits off me (I had quite a large bosom before).

 

Then watched Where the Wild Things Are. I was in two minds about this one - there just didn't seem any point to the film whatsoever, but at the same time it's technically genius, in that I honestly couldn't tell where the real-life props and costumes ended and the CGI began. Y'know, unlike in any Marvel film where you know exactly where the CGI is even when the transition are flawless - this one just did it perfectly. Unless there wasn't any CGI, but I don't remember animatronics having gotten that good overnight. So yeah, I hate it when films seem to have little point to them (yeah yeah, he's dreaming, the characters in the imaginary world are his family as well as different sides to his own personality, but how long can you really push that before tedium sets in?), but love it when they push boundaries.

[Pete]

Sorry, when I said no point to the last film I think I meant no plot. No point sounds a bit harsh

[Sgt. Strike]

Two awesome movies, and if possible the second is a little better than the first, with a very wicked twist, is the Boondock Saints, and Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day. Beautiful movies if I do say so myself.

 

Pete, I rented, I think, or did I get it for free? I don't remember. Anyway, I also watched Where the Wild Things Are. I caught myself trying to curl up in my chair and sleep. I read it as a child, and loved the story as a kid. But the movie, I just don't know. Either I was watching it when I was very tired, or else it just didn't seem to move all that well. I probably won't get it again, and watch it.

 

I'm waiting until probably Wednesday to get a copy of Ironman II. I'll go tomorrow and have my video store put a hold on a copy for me. Or call and ask them to do that. I saw it in the theater, and it was awesome.

[FullAuto]

Not a film, but The Wire is pretty damn good. Got series 1, watched it in two days. Just ordered series' 2-5. About as far from black and white as you can get, this is stone cold grey all the way through. The way it examines hierarchies and institutions (including organised crime) is quite good, and the refusal to have a simple goodies vs baddies clash is refreshing, although it is also disappointing as it reminds me of how strictly two-dimensional a lot of television and film is. The majority of it is still stuck with black hat = bad guy thinking.

[FullAuto]

Arahan. A very good South Korean effort, lots of laughs and lots of martial arts, looks a bit cheap here and there but also looks surprisingly good in places. Good use of slow motion, got a pretty girl in it. Complete!

[Sunflash]

Finally saw the whole movie of The Prestige.

 

I'm horribly jaded when it comes to most movies, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to me when I managed to correctly predict MOST (not all, though!) of the various plot twists and reveals and whatnot. Slightly disapointing in that regard, but overall a fairly well done movie up until the end.

 

The ending managed to just make me shake my head in disgust at the writers. It went from "Hey this could actually have HAPPENED" to "Ohlol, lame science fiction ending" :/

 

But, again. Jaded, I supposed. Still wasn't too shabby, worth it if you've got nothing better to do and don't want to bother with a good-guy movie. (though the 'good guy' DOES kinda win, I suppose.)

[Matri]

...(though the 'good guy' DOES kinda win, I suppose.)

I kinda lost track of who the "good guy" was supposed to be halfway through.

 

Stayed lost till this very day.

 

*checks MapQuest* Yup, still lost.

[Pete]

My brother bought me Kick Ass for my birthday a few weeks ago. I can't thank him enough - an unpredictable film and Nicolas Cage doing a decent performance for what, from the films I've seen him in, is his only stand-out performance since Leaving Las Vegas (sorry Nic, but you do rather play the same character in every other film!). The girl in it is made for life after that - if she doesn't get offered every role going then Hollywood's even dumber than we already think it is. Spoiled somewhat when Kick Ass turns up in the finale (I was thinking the rest was sort of plausible up until then, I really was).

 

My girlfriend also bought me Going Postal (of Discworld fame no less). Charles Dance is perfect, as is Clare Foy. The rest of the case weren't too bad either, and on the whole the best small-screen movie adaptation of any of the books thus far

[FullAuto]

I don't think there is a good guy. Both Borden and Angier have their reasons, neither is a bad guy, but 'good guy' is not a label you can stick on either of them. They are exactly what they should be, good characters who do not fit preconceived stereotypes and so more closely resemble human beings than cardboard cutouts.

 

I loved the film, and thought the ending was excellent, especially given the fact that Tesla's invention tells you exactly how the trick is done, and Angier's demo of it later on shows you exactly what the reveal is going to be, basically.

 

It would be lame and quite out of the blue if it wasn't shown very clearly beforehand.

[Pete]

Ha, I messed the thread up by posting before you