Movies

[Hunter Sopko]

Hot Tub Time Machine:  3.5/5.:  Funny...but too man type casted characters.  Be original comedies...

What do you mean by "Man type casted"?

[Grefter]

I don't know but it sounds hot.  Also it is an 80s movie, of course everyone is type cast.

Shutter Island - I am late off the boat on this one but WATCH THIS MOVIE WATCH THIS MOVIE WATCH THIS MOVIE.  Scorsese fucking owns me.  I was going into it fairly tentative.  A trailer for Kick Ass really killed the mood a little at the start (Seriously Cinema dudes, don't fucking lead into Scorsese off "It is shaped like a big cock"), but cryptic mystary stuff and I was happy just to get some great cinematography out of it even if I didn't like the movie.  Then it got going full swing and wow.  You can see the main twist pretty early on and be right, but they play the whole movie so straight they will keep you guessing the whole time.  Just awesome awesome cinema.  I have been saying that a lot lately, but this is totally true, great year for me and cinema so far even with everything coming out on 3D.

[Captain K.]

Percy Jackson and the Olympians:  Generic children's stuff.  Female lead is terrible.  Hades and Persephone were fun though.

How to Train your Dragon:  Quite good actually.  Much better dragon-riding movie than Avatar at least.

[Meeplelard]

Princess and the Frog: Finally got around to seeing this.

Honestly? Its kind of boring and slow moving, and didn't really emulate what made the 90s Animated Disney movies great.  The humor wasn't as consistent or fresh (felt like they were trying too hard most of the time), songs are completely immemorable, and the formula was old.

Note that I didn't see Pochahantas (SP?) or Hunchback of Notre Dam, though it sounds like those two were a considerable step down compared to the other movies of the era (and the fact that Kingdom Hearts has barely even acknowledged their existence thus far can't be a good sign), so I can't comment on those.  Still, just about all the main animated (2D) Disney movies of the 90s except maybe Tarzan were fun quality stuff.  Princess and the Frog felt like it was trying to emulate that, only now with better animation and technology for some more impressive visuals, which I'll grant was actually pretty good, but they fell short as they really missed what made those 90s classics good.

Should note that I think those 90s Disney Movies are the highlight of Disney Animated movies (starting with Little Mermaid, at least); all the ones before really lack something for whatever reason.  From what I can remember, their idea of comic relief was for the most part "Cute animals/characters who are just 'aw' inducing" to lighten the mood rather than being genuinely funny, thus entertainment wasn't nearly as high.  There is one big exception in the mix, and that's Sword and the Stone, which is just awesome, my only regret is not seeing that movie ENOUGH! (I've watched a bunch of the others a shit load of times, Sword and the Stone I've seen scattered a few times throughout my life, and like only once from start to end.)

So yeah, back to the movie at question, felt like it tried to bring back what made those movies from a decade ago awesome and...didn't really succeed.  Honestly, felt like Little Mermaid Redux at times, only slower moving, worse music, and the characters were frogs most of the movie!

[Idun]

Thirst - 3/5. Realized this was by Wook after all of the very odd psychological stuff started happening.
Ong Bak 2 - 4/5. Ending confused me due to lack of education about a lot of the religious aspects. Awesome action. Expected.
Gremlins 2 - lol. That's the rating. Very witty movie. 3/5.
The Usual Suspects - 4/5.
Shrink -3/5.

Haven't been able to watch many movies. Fail.

[Cotigo]

Cannibal! The Musical - It's on Hulu now so I watched it.  Heh, all the Indians were Japanese people.

"What tribe is this?"
"We are... Indians!"
"Well, yeah, but..."
"What, you don't believe that we are... Indians?  Of course we are.  We have so many Teepees.  Look at all the Teepees we have."

[BaconForTheSoul]

Been on a theater binge via ultimate boredom.

She's Outta My(Your?) League:  5.5/10- It was... entertaining some of the time, but the pacing was pretty lame.  Loses about 2 points for the final scenes in the airport, which was fucking stupid.  Yes, it's a silly comedy but after having "somewhat real" scenarios happen during the move, you can't just end with a scene that would get most of the characters arrested 1280312831208 times each.

Hot Tub Time Machine: 6.5/10- Funnier than She's Outta, but still pretty generic in the humor.  Token black guy, kid who wants to be a kid from Superbad, token asshole, and the main that is supposed to make it all work.  Rgr rgr rgr.  Regardless, kept me entertained most of the time.

Clash of the Titans: 6.5/10- Odd title for a movie with ZERO fucking Titans in it.  Didn't see it in 3D, but it was entertaining for the most part.  Bit of advice though.  If you go see this, go expecting some action and a complete lack of a plot.  After thinking about this movie I realized it actually sucked beyond belief.  Poor/no character development, epic plot holes, and so on.  But since I went in just looking to see shit get killed, this didn't bother me during the movie.  If I had gone in expecting a real movie, proly woulda been like a 3/10.

[NotMiki]

Gremlins 2

So good!

"Casablanca...colorized!  With a new happy ending!"

[Captain K.]

Plus the awesome Hulk Hogan cameo.

[Meeplelard]

Plus the awesome Hulk Hogan cameo.

Supposedly, in the theaters, there were 3 variants of that cameo.  One with Hulk Hogan (which was the one released to video and such), one with John Wayne and one with...forget the 3rd guy.  I can't verify this, but my friend insists that this was the case.

[Sierra]

I'm pretty sure John Wayne died in the seventies.

*checks*

1979. I think your friend heard some silly rumor and didn't bother to check it. (This seriously reminds me of one of those stupid urban legends you'd hear in elementary school. Like, someone's NES glitched out while playing SMB3 and YOSHI made a cameo or something, it only happened once and no one was there to see it but it really happened, totally!)

I remember Gremlins 2 faring much better than most unplanned sequels do, but I haven't watched it since like middle school. Suppose I'm due for another viewing.

Oh yeah, I watch stuff too.

The Men Who Stare at Goats: Not as enamored of it as Grefter was, but it was fun. Certainly the best use of Boston ever.

[Meeplelard]

Hmm...apparently, this is actually the case:

At one point in the film, Dante attempted to involve his audience in the story by making it seem as if the gremlins had taken control of whatever theatre wherein Gremlins 2 would feature. The film seems to be broken by the gremlins, who then engage in shadow puppetry over a white screen. Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan then appears in a cameo appearance and intimidates the gremlins into running the rest of Gremlins 2; this joke was inspired by a similar stunt in William Castle's film The Tingler (1959). The studio feared that people might leave the theater if they thought the film had broken; Dante therefore secured the inclusion of the sequence by assembling some people for a preview of the film. When the scene was shown, the real-life audience found it enjoyable and stayed in the theatre. Dante later described this scene as one of the most widely enjoyed jokes in Gremlins 2. When Gremlins 2 made its debut on home video, the filmmakers altered the scene, to make it seem as if VCRs had been broken by the gremlins. This time actor John Wayne forces the gremlins into continuing the film, although voice impersonation was needed since Wayne had been dead since 1979.[3]  Notably, a clip from Falling Hare, a film released in 1943 featuring Bugs Bunny and a gremlin, appears in this version.

Bolded part is the significant stuff.

So yeah, seems like there is some truth to this claim.

[NotMiki]

That's funny.  I watched a DVD of it a few years back and it was certainly the Hulk Hogan version.

[Cmdr_King]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCC5C5n6_PE

Well there ya go.  I remember watching a rental of it back in the VHS days and seeing the Hulk Hogan version too, but this doesn't exactly look cobbled together so it must've been released this way somewhere.

[metroid composite]

Randomly re-watched the Little Mermaid.  Superb characters, but the movie as a whole was really not as good as I remember it being.

Definitely some failure of suspension of disbelief moments--like the "kiss the girl" scene--Sebastian's singing for the benefit of Price Dude (who has a name, but less personality than his dog, so I'll just call him Prince Dude).  This all implies that either Prince Dude understands Sebastian, or that it's the equivalent of Sebastian yelling at the movie screen "NO, DON'T GO DOWN THERE" to characters that obviously can't hear him.  Okay, the second option seems a lot more sane, let's go with that.  But then when Prince Dude is trying to guess Ariel's name, Sebastian whispers her name to him.  Okay, so much for the logical option, I guess that means Prince Dude understands Sebastian.  Which brings up an interesting question--why isn't he freaking out that the entire swamp has broken into song around him?  Or is he used to hearing random songs break out in his near vicinity apparently about him when he thinks he's totally alone?  'Cause that would freak me out.  And speaking of being able to understand Sebastian, why doesn't Sebastian explain the situation rather than have Ariel pantomime stuff?  Okay, maybe he wants to keep hidden, but he could be the disembodied voice of suggestion that speaks to Prince Dude while he sleeps.

I also couldn't help but feel that despite having a female main, and a female villain, that the cast felt male-dominated.  Ariel talks less than...all the major characters she interacts with (Flounder, Sebastian, Triton, Scuttle) and that's when she does have her voice.  Ursula, has few scenes, and comes across as a creepy gender neutral in her scenes, at least in voice (which is a fantastic fit for the character, to be fair).  I dunno, it's something I've been noticing recently--listening to radio, flipping through TV channels--if someone's talking, they're male 75% of the time.  Not that you can't have a brilliant movie of all-male characters (Inglorious Basterds jumps to mind as coming close) but, it's just...I was expecting the Little Mermaid to buck the predominant trend (seems reasonable given the two most memorable characters are female), and...it really doesn't.

[Grefter]

It is Disney girl, it does not buck trends and it certainly still doesn't do a great many favours to feminism and it most definitely wasn't doing it any around the time of Little Mermaid.  Ursula sounds like a dude because she is modelled after a drag queen (obvious statement).  Although yes the central points of the entire plot that is chock full of females is a Prince and Triton's rather large triple pronged weapon.  Welcome to Disney.

Inglorious Basterds comes close?  You wound my heart with such words.  Next you will say Robert Downey Jr is just kind of alright at playing a toked up drunkard.

And El Cid, Men Who Stare At Goats is someone making movies just for me, so yeah, I wouldn't expect others to be quite as enthralled by it.  Well worth a watch even if you aren't quite as into that whole kind of deal though.  Edit - Wow, checking what I originally posted it wasn't even quite as glowing a review of it as I have been giving it in person and you still picked that.  Suffice to say, I fucking loved that movie.

[Meeplelard]

That's funny.  I watched a DVD of it a few years back and it was certainly the Hulk Hogan version.

Yes, "DVD" is not "VHS", so that doesn't exactly disprove anything.  DVDs are noteworthy for often doing things as they were in the theatres, or sometimes using versions never before seen at all, or what have you.  Basing a VHS off the DVD version is basically poor idea.

I've only seen the Hulk Hogan version, but the only way I saw the movie was through HBO or whatever, and we just recorded the movie that way, so never saw the official VHS release, so I can't verify it.

My guess is the original VHS had the John Wayne version, then a later version of the VHS came out having the Hulk Hogan version like the theaters initially had, and all subsequent versions had the original Hulk Hogan version, meaning finding the ones with John Wayne would be really hard.  Like CK said, the Youtube vid doesn't seem like an amateur, cobbled together thing, so it probably was released in someway somewhere.  My guess it was in the initial release only and after a point, they released the version with Hulk Hogan and they just kept it that way.

[metroid composite]

Inglorious Basterds comes close?  You wound my heart with such words.  Next you will say Robert Downey Jr is just kind of alright at playing a toked up drunkard.

Umm...what I meant was that "Inglorious Basterds is an awesome movie that comes close to having no females."  Inglorious Basterds does not, in fact, have all male characters--there's jewgirl, who could be argued to be the main character, and British spygirl who has one scene but it sets up the whole endgame.

[Hunter Sopko]

Yeah. On TV the version thats always shown is the Hulk Hogan one.

And another amazing movie with no females? Glengarry Glenross.

[Shale]

Chocolate: A Thai movie about an autistic girl who for no apparent reason has the power to instantly master martial arts by watching them on TV. She uses this power to go around beating the shit out of gangsters until they give her money. It is fantastic.

[Sierra]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCC5C5n6_PE

Well there ya go.  I remember watching a rental of it back in the VHS days and seeing the Hulk Hogan version too, but this doesn't exactly look cobbled together so it must've been released this way somewhere.

I stand corrected. I'd be surprised if the DVD version doesn't have the alternate scene as an extra, actually.

[BaconForTheSoul]

MC I can think of a few movies with no males, but I'm not sure if any are family friendly...

[Dark Holy Elf]

Or is he used to hearing random songs break out in his near vicinity apparently about him when he thinks he's totally alone? 

He's in a Disney movie. I'd suggest that he is, in fact, used to it.


Also, I don't even remember who Scuttle is and I watched that movie way too many times as a kid, so I'm not really sold on him being more important than Ariel/Ursula. <.< Overall seconding Grefter (although: Mulan hype here) but yeah.

[Cmdr_King]

He's the seagull.

I dunno, Little Mermaid struck me as fairly anti-female by necessity due to... well, the whole premise being a shallow love affair to start with.  I feel like the other disney of the era is considerably better?  But my perspective isn't exactly the same as yours, of course.  Certainly despite being a better movie on the character front you'd find a fairly lopsided gender split in dialogue in Beauty and the Beast too.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's Disney. They're all about reinforcing Fundie morals You know, "Hate some Jews!!!!"