Movies

[Shale]

I was under the impression that Cloverfield was supposed to be a Godzilla-style movie, as told from the point of view of the people in the buildings he knocks over in the first five minutes of a rampage.

[Meeplelard]

I was under the impression that Cloverfield was supposed to be a Godzilla-style movie, as told from the point of view of the people in the buildings he knocks over in the first five minutes of a rampage.

Pretty much, yes.

Its *NOT* a Friday the 13th style movie.  That's a slasher movie, where people are dying left and right.  Cloverfield, all of like 2 people actually die the entire movie.  That's not comparable to Friday the 13th.

We actually see the monster, is the other thing, its just retarded at how it handles it.

It fails at the "Something is going to get you" feel too; the only moment you get this feeling is in the subway, when those lice attack, and that more came off as poorly choreographed action scene (due to movie's style) and...yeah...

Its definitely more like Kaiju from a different perspective than your Friday the 13th thing.

And Cloverfield is not a "Disaster" film.  Disaster deals with a Force of Nature and BECAUSE its a force of nature, you can't do shit about it, and there's no way to prepare for it even knowing its coming (or alternatively, the people know there's no time).  Cloverfield does not deal with that; one of the big things about a Disaster Film is how you KNOW shit is coming down and you KNOW nothing can be done about it.  Part of the allure, perse, is seeing just how people manage to cope with this shit.

[Grefter]

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_12553.html

Here you can see quotes from the Producer of the film saying how it is Godzilla but with an American and "insane and intense".

So it is a Kaijuu movie.

[Meeplelard]

Speaking of Giant Monster Movies that attempt to NOT be Kaiju...

King Kong (Peter Jackson Remake): Saw it.  Was fun and entertaining, but the movie really was a lot longer than it needed to be.  I understand they're trying to play up the emotional side of things, but there felt a lot of needless slow moving parts that hurt the overall pace of the movie.  The scene where he's hanging on the Empire State Building, and just him and the girl are constantly looking at each other, slowly back and forth...yeah, ok, we get the point, its tragic, it was easy to display that in a scene 1/3rd the length.

Other than that?  The movie did show respect for the original 1930s version.  Takes place in the 30s, though this did lead to requiring some setting building, to remind us of the current mood and technology of the time, etc.  Ok, that's fair.  The boat scenes...well, guess they wanted some character development, which is fair, but all of these I felt could have been done a little faster.

Again, the movies biggest flaw is its length; its a 2 hour movie spread across 3.  Making it longer than the original was appropriate, but seems they went a little overboard here.

I will state that I like how they played up the whole "Kong is the victim, NOT the villain" thing in this movie rather well, showing that they did actually do their homework by watching the original, and noting how Kong did like nothing wrong, and all his actions were pretty justified.  Especially since they did show him having a calm, gentle side.  Didn't hurt that the Female Lead wasn't just screaming the entire time like she did in the original, making the whole Beauty and Beast Subplot more believable.  

Overall, decent movie, and retained respect for the original movie, for the most part, while just giving it more of a modern feel, which is about all you can ask for in a remake.

Now I'm tempted to see the Original again just for contrast purposes.  

And yes, while I do like Kaiju, it is nice to be reminded how you CAN make Giant Monster movies that are *NOT* strictly Kaiju style, and King Kong's about as Non-Kaiju as you can get (especially since he predates Kaiju by a good 20 years.)

Oh, and I must say, the movie clearly took some pages from Jurassic Park.  The way T-rex's looked and the fact that there were arbitrary Velociraptors in the movie...well, do I need to say anything more <_<?

[Scar]

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell:

Amazing film. Tucker Max, regardless if these are true stories is brilliant.

Dance monkey! Dance for your dollar!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I rented GI Joe simply because it was rated "PG-13 for Pervasive Mayhem." So I figured, hey, what the hell, I'm down for pervasive mayhem. It is... wow, mind-scrambling bad. I had absolutely no expectations and it somehow still managed to shock me. I think I summed the movie up when I remarked to my brother, "you know shit's getting ridiculous when the one using the most practical tactics is A GOD DAMN NINJA."

So, yeah. Writing's bad, acting's bad, the movie has eleven extended flashback sequences give or take, and those crazy super-suits they hyped up in the commercials get used for a chase scene halfway through the movie and never seen again (though they are used to spray 10mm machine gun fire in the direction of a speeding van once while on a crowded street in Paris during the middle of the afternoon in a crowning moment of ridiculous).

[Cotigo]

Inglorious Basterds:

Finally watched this.

What I expected:  Brad Pitt and TF2_Scout go around killin' Nyazis.
What the movie delivered:  Exactly that.

What I expected:  Not much else.  It's a Quinten Tarantino movie, so it's going to run mostly off of Rule of Cool and succeed.  Lots of campy blood will abount.
What the movie delivered:  Holy shit.

Many things distinguished this film from others in my mind.  First, there's the fact that most of the film was in foreign languages, as appropriate to the scene.  I'm not sure about recent films since I don't watch movies, but usually in films characters from foreign lands speak English with a stupid accent, yes?  Or at least it's all in one language, depending on the target audience.  Not this movie--so much to the point that they lampshaded it, and the accent in an actor's German became a largely relevant plot point.  Hadn't expected that.

Number two:  It portrayed a lot of the Nazis as human--even Goebbels was given a moment of humanity toward the end.  Given how the movie was billed, as a Nazi-killin' good time, I had expected that they would have been Indiana Jones Nazis--storyless antagonists.

Number three:  Holy shit this movie managed to be profound.  There's one moment at the end, (spoilers) where we see Hitler and Goebbels and the rest of the Nazi scum laughing it up, enjoying a movie where some German soldier snipes a bunch of Allies.  It's pretty clear that we're supposed to find this sort of display disgusting, horrifying--Nazi behavior. 

Then in the next scene the protagonists burst into the theatre from a balcony and start firing into the crowd while the theatre owner burns down the building after locking all the Nazis in.  The scene is very satisfying; who, in our society, wouldn't love to see Hitler take a shotgun to the face, while the top members of his Reich die in a fire?

And that's when it strikes--I, the viewer, am no better than the Nazis.  The laughter and joy the Nazi audience gets from viewing "The Nation's Pride" is no different than the joy I got out of seeing  "the face of Jewish Vengance" (as the movie itself titled that scene).

And that's the message of the movie.  I don't think it was an accident--the subject of how the Allies are morally little different from the Nazis (but just less extreme in their actions) comes up a few times in the movie.  For instance, when they're playing the guessing game in the tavern. 

Of course, the film doesn't take that message that far--in reality, the Nazis did unspeakable things and the movie ends with the Allies getting the last punchline, and I wouldn't have the movie end any other way.  Still, it manages to make one question one's own view of the world, and reminds the viewer that they could easily support atrocities under the right circumstances.  Kudos, Tarantino.  I might have to respect you as a storyteller now.

[Grefter]

There is bonus points in there for Cinema as a weapon as well, you see quite clearly there with what Goebbels was doing and the counter with what Shoshana does at the end.  Also of note is that the stock footage used when they are explaining that the film is highly flamable is form a film where a kid is tricked into delivering a bomb in a film canister.

And there is a fucking David Bowie song in the soundtrack.

Tarantino made the movie just for me it seems.

[Meeplelard]

Bolt:  I didn't really have any desire to see this movie...but Mandy did, and she wanted to watch it with someone, and well, it was short, so why not.

I did miss the beginning, but eh, doubt I was missing much.

The movie was...utterly formula.  Just like Kung Fu Panda, it was ridiculously easy to call exactly what was going to happen before it happened...heck, I figured out the general sequence of events in the ending less than half way in, outside of the last scene,  which is mostly cause there were a number of cliches that they could have drawn from, all of which can be summed up as "He moved on with his life, and is happy about how things are...oh yeah, his new friends found some way to benefit from this too."

No, I'm not spoiling the movie, its just so damn formula.

But being formula wouldn't be such a bad thing if it was fun to watch...just it kind of wasn't.  Humor kind of fell flat, the excitement wasn't there, and...yeah, definitely one of the lesser films.

Can't say I went in expecting much, and I can't say the movie did much to prove me wrong.  As I said, if it wasn't for the fact that Mandy guilt tripped me into watching this (...she's good at this stuff, those of you at DLC4 can probably see why), I'd probably not bothered to ever watch this.

[Shale]

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths - Excellent. Good fights, funny nods to comics continuity that don't get too obtrusive, really good cast, and a plot that hangs together well and doesn't feel cut short (given that these things are held to 70 minutes each, that can be a problem). Not as good as The New Frontier, but what is?

Edit: Also, if you want to (and can ignore Hal Jordan being in it), you can take this as a new DCAU installment, set between the second and third seasons of Justice League. It fits perfectly.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The Wolfman would have been better if Del Toro didn't seem like he was on laudanum.

[Idun]

The Blind Man Zatoichi - 4/5
Sukiyaki Western Django - 3/5
Fast and Furious - 2/5
Trainspotting - 3/5
Julie and Julia (if I ignore the profits that Julie is getting) 5/5 (OH, and ignore Julie completely). If I just think of Meryl Streep it's a 5/5. If I remember that Julie exists, 2/5.
3:10 to Yuma - 3/5.
Inkheart - 3/5.
Outlander - 3/5.
Paris, Je t'Aime - 4/5.
Dexter Season 1 - 5/5.
Dexter Season 2 - 5/5.
Spartacus Ep 1 & 2 - 4/5. It's going to start going down if there's as much sex as it gives off.
Ping Pong Playa - 5/5*. Golden. Love it.
Frontiers - 5/5. Who knew the French could pull off a really disgusting horror flick?
Stand and Deliver -5/5. Seen this my third time. Probably the last. "Oh, so you're the finger man?"
Shakespeare in Love - 5/5. Seen this my 6th time, not the last. >_>
The Babysitters - 3/5.
.....

Next movie? Up!

[Idun]

El Bola - 3/5. Absolutely no resolution which the entire movie was begging.
Inglourious Basterds - I'm prefacing this with the fact that I do not like Quentin Tarantino's bodies of work. Too much excess dialogue I find useless, and action packed within the last 15 minutes. IB wasn't as bad like Deathproof, but totally didn't keep me interested besides the minute appearances of the Inglorious Basterds. 3/5.

About to watch Zombieland. Up comes via DVD this Friday! [:

[Grefter]

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Labours Of Herculues abridged with one story cribbed from the Odyssey.  Alright.

Crank - This was awesome, amazingly over the top action movie of win.
Crank: HIgh Voltage - This was even more over the top and even more win.  Porn actors on strike "DO YOU WANT ME TO FUCK THIS CAR?"

Worth watching.

8mm - Caught the end of this again because my brother was watching the commentary.  I was still absolutely enthralled by this movie.  I don't quite know how I got through the end again though, it is still a hard watch, but I guess it was past the hardest parts.  If you haven't watched 8mm yet though you should watch it.

[BaconForTheSoul]

Zombieland- Pure fucking win.  The fact that I already love Woody and Bill helps the case though.
Dexter Season 1- Good... not amazing like everybody told me it was.
Dexter Season 2- Little better than the first, still not as amazing as it was hyped to be.  I think the fact that the new female antagonist was utterly unbelievable didn't help.

On a side note.  Community is an awesome show.

[Idun]

From what I hear, the things people like about Dexter is the inconclusive morality - whether or not he is truly justified, evil or good.

The thing I particularly like about Dexter are the characters. They're one dimensional and play quite well into the separating branches of story. Dialog is interesting, and the monologues of Dexter are funny to me.

The crazy lady in Season 2 and Dexter's odd relationship based off of the Dexter from Season 1 that was extremely calculated, did seem extremely out of place.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I think Lithgow is the best Dexter antagonist to date, honestly. He's fucking awesome at it.

[Idun]

Main antagonist during a season? Is he in later seasons (IE, not 1-2)?

[Shale]

He's in season 4, and I believe he won a Golden Globe for it.

[Scar]

Anyone seen the Book of Eli? I'm thinking of taking a girl out to see it. Her request.

[Idun]

Up - very good movie. I also like the fact that the protagonist was an old man and the epic Star-Warsish fight on the floaty thingy was awesome. Story premise was fine, characters were golden, lines were necessarily hilarious, design was beautiful. Mmm, only qualm I would say I had . . .  none.
5/5.

Law Abiding Citizen - good shit. Did not like the ending. Necessary, I suppose, since I don't believe he'd ever be able to live a calm life. Both should have died, anyway. A follow up on the law system would have been nice. Could guess who his accomplice was when they panned out a view of a warehouse next to the prison.
4/5.

[Shale]

A Shot In The Dark: I honestly can't remember if I'd seen this before, but it rules. Peter Sellers was a genius, Blake Edwards still is, contain your surprise.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Dodgeball - Is fucking hilarious. I laughed pretty much forever.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Anyone seen the Book of Eli? I'm thinking of taking a girl out to see it. Her request.

It is basically Fallout 3, but a movie and you are a black dude.

[Meeplelard]

La Cage Aux Folles: Saw the original.  Its...uhh...weird, though the last 20 minutes or so are hilarious in that ridiculous sense.  I suppose that's the point; they need all that set up so the last 20 minutes just sort of train wreck, while you still being able to follow it.