Movies

[Lady Door]

Les Mis - I did not know I was going to make a close study of everyone's pores. Also, it was very true to 19th century France -- everyone was sweating all the time!

Overall, pretty great. Definitely not a movie I should have seen on Christmas Day because, well, it's fucking depressing.

Thenadiers were a much needed source of levity, and well cast. I approved of most of the casting, for that matter. Kept pretty true to the musical, but made a few changes to favor the movie format that called upon some book material. Only real downside was, sadly enough, the opening number: the sound mixing favored the landscape over the singers, and it took some of the oompf out of the performance.

[Cmdr_King]

Hey, Les Mis is a great Christmas movie!  It's all about the fundamental nobility of the human spirit and the power of love and community.

See, no matter what indignities life might heap upon the characters, being shown any real measure of kindness and dignity burns straight through the cynicism and awakens altruism, love, a desire to change the world for the better.  But it's important to remember you have to bring others into your community, not just give them a drive-by kindness.  Without a sense of worth and belonging, even the most dedicated among us can fall into despair.

Be with those you love.  Bring those who are needy to you that you might show them kindness.  Judge a man not by his actions, but by simple virtue of his humanity and show all people the same respect and love you'd give your dearest brother.

Viva la France.

Clearly the world did end on Friday.  It has transformed into something far stranger and more terrifying.

[Idun]

Vive.

[AndrewRogue]

Be with those you love.  Bring those who are needy to you that you might show them kindness.  Judge a man not by his actions, but by simple virtue of his humanity and show all people the same respect and love you'd give your dearest brother.

And, in the end, it won't matter and you'll probably die unloved and a failure.

[Grefter]

In the end the only one that will love you is yourself.  That is why I intend do go out during a drug fuelled bout of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

[Cmdr_King]

The truest christmas statement of all, yes.

[Meeplelard]

GI Joe: Rise of Cobra:

...no, I don't know why I watched this.  Probably because I never saw it, it was on TV, and "commercial free" (which was true) and I said "what the hell, how bad can it be?"

...it's bad.  It's not even fun to make fun of, it's just dull, predictable (outside of Disney deathing the Black Guy Best Friend instead of killing him off straight up), and I can see how true fans of GI Joe must have felt betrayed by this movie.

At least Transformers had giant robots that turned into stuff, blowing up vehicles; GI Joe didn't even have that much!

[Shale]

The Dark Knight Rises: That might be one of the most ambitious movies I've ever seen. It falls far short of what it tries to do, but is still a good movie, and sometimes ambition is a virtue in itself. I mean, yes there are a few jarring continuity issues and the third-act twist is predictable and the ending twist is heavy-handed and (mostly) dumb - I liked JGL taking over as Batman, although I say he should be Azrael instead of Robin, come on it's already Knightfall - but it's Dark Knight Returns and Knightfall and No Man's Land, and all the storylines are woven together into a narrative whole without feeling like any of them got short shrift, even if the plot doesn't make much sense in some areas. Plus, while the fight scenes weren't especially good, they also weren't filmed in Bourne-O-Vision anymore, which is a massive improvement.

Oh, yeah. Bane. The character was....fine, I guess, although his comic self has potential they just kind of tossed away in favor of the third-act twist. More importantly, his voice. I could have dealt with him being muffled and growly. That would be okay. He sounded like Darth Connery.

[Hunter Sopko]

Jarring as it is, there is nothing wrong with Darth Connery

[Sierra]

Darth Connery was exactly why I liked Bane in the movie.

[Meeplelard]

If nothing else, we can all agree that it's way way better than this version of Bane:

[Hunter Sopko]

Also gave us this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYmuHatJ14

[Captain K.]

The Hobbit:  was good.  I liked it better than I expected to, and I can now stomach the idea of it being split into three movies (which I found an abhorrent concept before).

As for the new super-fps thing, for the most part it isn't noticeable.  However the fight against the goblins is extremely video-gamey in appearance.  And it's painfully obvious that the eagle talon picking up Thorin is made of cloth.

The movie also had Rock-em Sock-em Stone Giants.

In trailer news, someone loves Japan so much they made a fanfic of Godzilla vs Robotech: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2197006105/

[Idun]

Resident Evil Retribution: Really, really, really bad movie, bad action scenes, too many characters (hinting already at a sequel with everyone there---!!!), very bad camera panning and slow motion, pretty bad music, pretty dumb ending, pretty boring last battle. But Alice did this all in wedge heels. 1/5.

Snow White and the Huntsman --- Chris Hemsworth, and Charlize Theron. Much, much better than RER. I am quite happy that Kristen Stewart had as few lines as possible. Girl looks a lot better with black hair and additional weave for some more volume though. So, I thought the movie had some very -good- moments, but the majority of it was just -okay- moments; triangle love plot seemed fairly transplanted considering producers almost always hype a love arc because love arcs are love arcs and capture attention because everyone is lonely, unhappy or at the moment dissatisfied with their partner.... [/needless rant] It's getting almost to RPGlol territory. Very beautiful movie though (3D graphx notwithstanding), and Theron's wardrobe is to kill for. Enjoyed it, esp. after RER.

Sherlock Holmes 2 - not done with this yet. It's funny, but I'm starting to like BBC's Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch than RDJ. Not finished with the movie yet! Just saw Moriarty fail.

[Shale]

ParaNorman: Not bad, but not nearly as good as the job the same crew did with Coraline. Starts really slow and the humor is obvious, but the plot twists are reasonably creative and the final "battle"  (of sorts) is really interesting visually. Turns out claymation lightning is neat!

[Luther Lansfeld]

The Hobbit - Decent, very nice looking, at times quite funny, a little on the plotless side compared to the other three movies, but still a fun watch.

[Sierra]

Decent is pretty much my reaction to The Hobbit. Has its moments but nothing to convince me it really needed to be three movies. For a movie called "The Hobbit," there do seem to be some long stretches in which there is in fact no hobbit on the screen. I think this is the principal problem. Most of this is material that's invented for the movie and/or heavily embellished from the book, and it constitutes the slowest parts of the film. Providing an adversary for Thorin doesn't really help much of anything. Big mean jerk wants revenge on big mean jerk. Yawn. Also yawn to wizards sitting around talking to each other about necrodude. Cut all this stuff and condense it to one, maybe two movies, massive improvement. Jackson being self-indulgement, studio not stopping him because it'll make bank anyway. Oh well. Fun enough for one viewing, can't see myself wanting to see it again though.

Movie mostly looked fine, but yeah, giant eagles were glaringly obvious as an "Oh, that's a special effect" moment.

Oh, and the songs that made it it into the movie were shockingly effective.

[SnowFire]

Weirdly enough, I suspect the studio might have egged Jackson on, so both deserve the blame.  LOTR is now a franchise, thus it's bookable money, thus even if all 3 films turn out mediocre loyalists will show up and see them anyway, thus 3x the cash.  The Matrix Revolutions was a huge disappointment critically and at the box office, but it still made money anyway, so the studio probably said "3 movies?  Score, they can even suck and we'll be good."

[Idun]

Madagascar 3.

I liked every single one of them. This one adds demonic French woman solo'ing Piaf & afros. Yes.

[Idun]

Les Mis - 5/5.
Short preface: I like musicals, operas, live plays, etc.

Jean Valjean: Because I am me, I did not recognize that Hugh Jackman played this role until the final, unfurled and large-chop scene towards the end. Needless to say, he captured Valjean's spirit. I am somewhat upset at the pacing of several scenes regarding his characterization: for example, they hastened part of interaction with Fantine before Javert enters, the court scene definitely could have used two or three more minutes for the sake of clarification behind Champmathieu -- since these are the two fundamental scenes they chose to keep, they should have minimalized a few acts: Cosette's yearning for Marius & the swift debate between Marius & Javert's first solo.

Anne Hathaway, expected a great performance. She's chosen very good roles, and has done nothing but act well since.
Javert was on point, and Seyfried -almost- escaped me, because I felt she was ill-picked. Then I remembered the convent the movie/musical ignored, and decided that her voice fit teen Cosette to a t.

Was very pleased with myself; I caught several bloopers. I think they call that something specific in movies. Anyway, M. Lemaire ce n'est pas Madeleine dans le musical; Hathaway, sa visage change entre deux scenes; plus, Valjean's visage d'apres la scene d'egout fait le meme-chose; Valjean's no. change par le fin du premier scene avec Javert, d'avant il recontre Cosette.

Music could have been better in parts; but all-in-all, me loves it long time. Definitely adds a little balance to all these plays from Commedia dell'Arte ) :


Edit* EDIT* So I also just thought about Eponine's amazing fucking corset. This reminds me over and over that I need to be properly fitted for one.

[Cmdr_King]

Brave- zzzzz.

I'm honestly with internet consensus- I think they secretly swapped the credits between this and Wreck-It Ralph.  Brave is a middle-of-the-road Disney with Princess affair, Wreck-It Ralph is an emotional, slightly cheesy flick that obviously had a lot of love put into it, Pixar's usual MO.

[Idun]

Fuck. I just got Brave on redbox. ._.

[NotMiki]

I thought Brave was a solid movie, excellent in places.  It does creepy atmosphere really well.

[Lady Door]

Brave was gorgeous, and not bad. But it felt much more like a standard Disney Princess flick than a heart-warming character special by Pixar.

[Meeplelard]

Crisis on Two Earths: Didn't know this movie was made based on a canned idea for the bridging of the finale of Justice League and the beginning of Justice League Unlimited, as well as this was the original idea that eventually spawned the Justice Lords stuff!  That's not largely relevant however...

What is relevant is that this is a fun flick.  Just a lot of little "ok, writers clearly just having fun" moments, like Wonder Woman vs. Bear (not saying what it is for those actually curious), as well just running with fun concepts, just playing with the "Everything about Heroes and Villains are backwards in this world...EVERYTHING!"


Superman vs. The Elite:  Superman vs. the 90s, and is fun as a result.  That is all.