The Movie Thread

[Sgt. Strike]

Captain America was great. Changed somethings, like uniform material and the hood, but overall, it was a good movie. And about as good as Thor.

 

Transformers dark side of the moon, also good. But they keep leaving the ending open. Ah well, maybe next time they will face Unicron, or something like that.

 

I saw the previews to Batman The Dark Knight Rises. It's going to probably end the Nolan/Bales batman trilogy quite well. I personally feel that whomever takes over should keep going in the same vein, and keep Robin out of the picture for a while longer.

 

Oh, FA, I kinda liked Priest myself. I'll give it another whirl to see how it goes.

[FullAuto]

Fright Night (the original). 80s classic faux horror. Bad in almost every respect, and yet such a great film anyway. Pure cheese, shot through with comedy. Up there with the Lost Boys, the Goonies et al. A horror film geek thinks a vampire has moved in next door, and helped (hindered) by his glue-sniffing friend (who is still smarter than he is), his sensible girlfriend (she doesn't want to have sex with him) and sceptical society in general, he has to sort it out.

[Pete]

I watched Conan the Barbarian last weekend. I wanted it to be good, probably because I thought Jason Momoa was great in Stargate Atlantis, and he does quite well with what he's given here.

 

The problem is that what all of the actors are given here is a weak plot, bad direction and a bad script to boot.

 

The opening scene is cheesy as hell, but they get right in there with some pretty visceral fight scenes which continue throughout (who needs a sword when you can smack people around with a giant hammer?).

 

I'll leave it to you guys to decide how good it is. If I'm honest, it's better than the original for me because you can actually see a lot more of the barbarian here in terms of the fights and blood and guts flying everywhere - obviously the original was limited in what they could show whereas nowadays you can fit quite a lot of violence into a 15 certificate.

 

The one thing I've still not worked out yet is there's one scene where a horse rides in - doesn't look like CGI - and gets it's head smacked by a massive guy swinging a hammer. Looks like an instant broken neck for the horse and it faceplants into the ground and the rider flies off. Now that was some impressive CGI. Or they killed a horse, which they're blatantly not allowed to do for real.

 

Carrying on with the CGI - I don't know whether it was because I was watching it in 3D, but some of the perspective in some of the CGI scenes was waaaaaaaaay off, as well as the focus, both of which started to distract me. I think it was just the 3D struggling with the CGI scenery though and it would probably be much better without 3D (to be honest the entire film would be better without 3D so you can actually focus on the film rather than the marvels of 3D "fluff").

 

Overall it was alright. I wouldn't say it's worth the expensive price of a cinema ticket (getting on for

[FullAuto]

Rare Exports. Perhaps the best film about Christmas, ever. Wonderfully, darkly funny film from those crazy Finns.

[FullAuto]

Ultramarines. Completely bollocks. Poor animation, rubbish excuse for a story with 'twists' you can see staggering over the hill from miles away, and even the action is poor and often nonsensical.

[FullAuto]

Harlan Ellison suing In Time.

 

I'd like to say there's something to this but I believe it's Ellison being litigious as per usual.

[FullAuto]

With the forthcoming release of The Thing remake in a few months (boo, hiss), I'd like to remember the original (it's not a remake of The Thing From Another World, but it is based on the same short story) with Peter Watts' excellent short story The Things.

 

Casts a rather different light on things.

[Space Voyager]

You need to have guts to film a remake of a superb movie. It is very risky aaaaand... totally unnecessary.

[FullAuto]

Batman: Year One. I was looking forward to this, liked the graphic novel, working up to the release of Arkham City next week, but it wasn't very good. Animation isn't brilliant (reminds me of the TV series, which isn't a bad thing but could they not spend a bit more money on a film?), the whole thing feels incredibly rushed, packing what is supposed to be a year's ins and outs into an hour, the acting is okay but a lot of the dialogue is crap.

 

Nowhere near as good as Gotham Knight or Mask of the Phantasm.

[FullAuto]

I got Batman Begins and The Dark Knight free on Blu-Ray with Arkham City, so swooped through them.

 

BB is slightly weak, as it's basically one big scene setting exercise. It's a bit sad that this all has to be gone through again, but hey ho. It's still perfectly watchable, albeit Bale doesn't have the gruff vocal quality he thinks he does as Batman, and umpteen other things that niggle at me as I watch it. Ultimately it lacks a strong central opponent for Batman to glide around, Liam Neeson doesn't get enough development as al Ghul and Whatshisface Scarecrow's lot is much the same, plus he's just not that great a villain.

 

Cue TDK and all is forgiven. It still doesn't make any sense, at all, but it has bags of style, it looks really nice, the action is sharp and well-shot, the plot is clever (for Batman) and Ledger does a great turn as the Joker. Bale's harder, still can't really be gruff, but otherwise does really well. Gary Oldman is solid as Gordon (bit of a small role for him, though) though he looks ten years younger than in BB, whoops. Maggie Gyllenhaal may be gorgeous but she's miscast.

 

Good double bill though.

[FullAuto]

An accurate dissection of key scenes in the awful Green Lantern film.

 

Hector Hammond: I am a quiet if awkward Xenobiology 101 teacher that shows no aggression or ill will toward anybody. I hope I don't get infected with an alien parasite that makes my head grow and makes me evil, because at the moment I'm significantly more sympathetic than Hal Jordan! Now, to dissect this purple alien!

(sticks hand in Abin Sur's wound, immediately gets infected with Parallax)

Hector Hammond: Well, shit.

[Pete]

Saw Predators yesterday. Despite a rather large amount of faults with scenery (rainforest to normal forest to rainforest to pine forest etc etc... they're on another planet so whatever) and some dubious dialogue and cast it was quite good. Still not as good as the original, but pretty good.

 

But then again I like AvP as well so don't take my word for it

 

One thing I will say though FA - Adrian Brody does a better gruff voice than Christian Bale does in Batman. I was very dubious of the casting until he started speaking and he was great.

[FullAuto]

I thought Predators was awful. The sheer amount of stuff recycled from Predator was shocking. It had some good moments (Laurence the Nutter, the samurai bit) but a lot of it was pure shite. Brody does do a gruff voice better than Bale, but I didn't find him believable because he's about five stone wringing wet. And how can you be any kind of elite soldier when the enemy can see your nose from miles away?

[Pete]

I'm with you on the recycled stuff, though that and the ever-changing trees were the main niggles for me and the rest was entertaining.

 

I think I enjoy less-than-good action films though because I disengage my brain as much as possible before watching them. Oh well, it passed 90 minutes or so

[FullAuto]

You are just much nicer.

 

If you get the chance, see The Guard, you will wet yourself.

[Space Voyager]

the samurai bit

Interesting, this was the lowest point of the movie for me. Using the ninja hype (reinvigorated by Kill Bills) I guess it wanted to present a tough MF, unafraid to face these space beasts etc. etc. (much like that Latino guy in Predator 1) but seriously... why not try to hide and strike them unaware if you chose to face them?!

 

It would be just coolest possible if the predator came and blew the Jakuza guy to pieces, showing the utter stupidity of this approach. But no, it is a Hollywood movie, so predator had to be just as stupid.

[FullAuto]

I thought he was pretty useless up until that point, actually, so it was nice to see him get a scene. The Predator fighting on (somewhat) even terms was established in the first film so I can live with that.

[Pete]

I thought he was pretty useless up until that point, actually, so it was nice to see him get a scene. The Predator fighting on (somewhat) even terms was established in the first film so I can live with that.

 

I'm just glad they made much more of this bit than they did in the first film where it just cuts away and you hear him scream.

 

There are talks of a sequel y'know, carrying on from where the film left off. Rodriguez has said that he was asked to keep it fairly low budget for his first Predators outing to test the waters and it sounds like a follow-up might have buckets of cash chucked at it and much more in the way of big sets, bigger plots and much more in the way of big special effects sequences. I know none of those three things guarantee a great film (I'm looking at you, Transformers franchise) but at least with Predators you know you're getting a cool alien

 

You are just much nicer.

 

If you get the chance, see The Guard, you will wet yourself.

 

That looks awesome, and I've only seen the poster!

 

Just remembered I also saw Green Zone - now that was a waste of time and a waste of Gleeson.

[FullAuto]

Green Zone was crap. Body of Lies is perhaps the best of that kind of film recently, but even that wasn't great.

 

The Hurt Locker is good, but it's an action film, not a war film.

 

The weird thing about Predators, is that I think it would have been much better had Rodriguez directed it. Antal's previous films haven't been great (Vacancy was okay, Armored was crap) so why was he given a fairly big franchise film? I don't think the issue is budget, I think it's trying to find something new to do with Predators versus humans but not just repeat what previous films have done. Humans versus Predators in a post-apocalyptic city would be cool, but it would only work if I directed it. :/

 

Ultimately, without a good genre director behind it, it's going to be bollocks.

[FullAuto]

Red Riding Hood. What a load of shit. Do not watch under pain of death.

[Pete]

Humans versus Predators in a post-apocalyptic city would be cool, but it would only work if I directed it. :/

 

...with Zombies.

[Azrael Strife]

Green Lantern I found harmless enough, not the greatest superhero movie out there, but enough to keep me interested for a little while; I'm not looking forward to a sequel however

 

Paranormal Activity 3 is by far the weakest of the 3 movies. Still enjoyable and with quite a few (somewhat predictable) scares. Some parts just don't make any sense, the cameras back then were too huge to go around carrying them, yet the characters do so in a most natural manner sometimes, filming stuff that normal people wouldn't (a few conversations between characters are filmed by one of them, even before the paranormal stuff goes full throttle, and without a reasonable explanation of why would he do that with such a huge ass camera).

Also very disappointing is that they left out a lot of stuff mentioned in previous movies, and that was shown in the trailer. The second trailer in particular looks very exciting, and actually more exciting than the movie itself. A wasted opportunity, and the increased usage of special effects is becoming less and less effective, the first movie remains the scariest for me, followed by the second.

 

LOTR extended edition is enjoyable, but I don't see a lot of added value for those 30, 40, 50 minutes extra in each movie respectively (have yet to watch the third).

[FullAuto]

...with Zombies.

 

They're a bit overexposed these days, but yeah, go on then.

 

LOTR extended edition is enjoyable, but I don't see a lot of added value for those 30, 40, 50 minutes extra in each movie respectively (have yet to watch the third).

 

They're already too long as it is. Must admit, I own the extended versions though, so I can't really criticise.

 

Age of Heroes. A strange mix of the good and terrible in almost equal measure. In virtually every scene you have good and terrible dialogue, acting, tactics, etc. It's like they had some idea of how to do it, but then an idiot took over. What really irked me was the rather stupid tone of the film as a whole, from the opening scene onwards there are large jumps in logic. I really enjoyed the good stuff (best use of SMGs I've seen in ages, actual short controlled bursts) but as it lies alongside the bad, I just got really annoyed with it all.

[Matri]

actual short controlled bursts

Coming from a guy calling himself "FullAuto".

[FullAuto]

A palpable hit. Touche.