Movies

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Argo - Wow, quite solid. I really liked how minimalistic both the storytelling and tension building were throughout the movie, forsaking melodrama for a visible sense of anguish and helplessness, which just grow with how outlandish the premise is. A lot of emotion can be recognized throughout the script, but it's never thrown in your face. The subtle dread and animosity seeping through every minute of the screenplay pretty much make the story, which also avoids a lot of the excesses I usually attribute to this kind of film. All in all, this is atypically elegant for Hollywood standards, and definitely worth watching. Plus, it has John Goodman and Alan Arkin being John Goodman and Alan Arkin, which is almost worth the ticket price alone.

(P.S.: Ben Affleck looks far better than he has any right to in '70s fashion.)

[Lady Door]

The Cabin in the Woods: WELCOME TO 2012, LOLOLOL

So yeah. It was an interesting concept, and ... well, yeah. That's about it. I watched the whole thing, curious to see how it would end, but there was never really any suspense. Or horror, for that matter. I had no idea what the "twist" of the movie was (other than that it had a twist), but it was not subtle. I am sure it has a lot of nuance a la Joss Whedon's masterful hand of characterization and pop culture analysis, but whatever.

Entertaining, and I can definitely see why it got 90%+ from the critics but only ~70% from the audience. I'm not entirely sure who it was targeting, frankly. It feels like a student project with a Hollywood budget.

[Grefter]

I'm not entirely sure who it was targeting, frankly. It feels like a student project with a Hollywood budget.

This guy

[Shale]

Dredd: Very solid. Urban is great at dissolving into a role, as usual, and the gunfights were really well done. The story was surprisingly... small, I guess is the word. It could have been adapted from a filler arc of the comics. Not a bad thing, but it sticks out. The 3D wasn't too annoying, and the last bit, where a villain's head gets crushed RIGHT AT YOU, is just hilarious.

[Grefter]

So a common thing I have heard said about it that I am interested in your take on.

"It feels like it could be the pilot for a TV series" or "It is setting itself up perfectly for sequels without sequel baiting".

I myself loved Dredd obviously and will buy when it hits stores here.

[Shale]

I can see it, but without that opening "here's how Megacity One works" scene, the entire thing is self-contained in the extreme. It could be a TV pilot for the adventures of Dredd and Anderson, but it could also be a mid-season episode with Anderson as a one-off guest star.

[Grefter]

Anderson as the opening audience surrogate is the normal spin (and clearly what she is in the movie) and common setup for TV shows.

But yeah all stems from it being day in the life sort of movie, feels like filler arc of comics, feels like small start up to bigger ongoing story of a TV show or series of movies.  Really just pinpoints to it being a good cheap way to do a movie while making it feel true to its roots.

Also I am TOTALLY fine with it being a filler Dredd comic, those tend to be the better ones from my incredibly limited experience.  Dredd in full overarching plot is a bit too WH40K for my taste (the 90s as fuck chainswords GRIMDARK component WE ARE ALWAYS GOING TO LOSE EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE bits) where filler stuff is more future dystopian police procedural where it works best.  The best part of Dredd isn't when big things happen, but the same shit that happened today is going to happen tomorrow.  That is really what makes for good Dystopia, not ROMG THERE IS NUKES IN THE EVERYWHERE AND INTERDIMENSIONAL ZOMBIE VAMPIRES.

[Hunter Sopko]

I'm not entirely sure who it was targeting, frankly. It feels like a student project with a Hollywood budget.

This guy

Damn right.

Enjoyment of Cabin in the Woods in proportional to how many horror movies you've watched, pretty much. It IS more of a comedy than a horror film (With stuff like Unicorn death, can you REALLY argue otherwise?). The way it turns the genre on its head is why you watch it.

EDIT: Not to mention the Betrayal at the House on the Hill setup.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It still would have been better if it were 15 seconds shorter.  The last 15 seconds absolves everyone of all guilt.

Anyway, I too saw Dredd because they talked it up on the Warrock and Ajax podcast.  It was pretty good, except that I wasn't clear for a while whether the evil Judges were actual Judges or some hired guns who were in disguise.  I mean, I got it eventually, but it could have been clearer a little sooner.  Most of the 3D stuff wasn't too noticable except for a couple of occasions that I found kind of eye-rolling.

Urban was great, but Urban is pretty much great at everything.

You know what it needed though is Rob Schneider.  For reals.

[Grefter]

It could have used a recycled food joke yeah.

Rob your continued good taste should really stop surprising me like it does.  It is never "oh man Rob likes that?"; but "Oh man someone else likes that? Oh of course, it is Rob."

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The recycled food joke from the original was actually the only time the movie made me laugh intentionally.

[Grefter]

I quote it often.  Laaawwwwwwwwwwwww gets a laugh out of me though.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I used to lay sick burns on that movie but after this review's description of him stealing that motorcycle I realize that there's literally never going to be a better insult to it:

Anyway, after Stallone makes a majestic, slow-motion leap down a flight of eight stairs - hilarious - he hops on the prototype flying Lawmaster and punches it in the screen until it works. This is how he makes his escape. I refuse to believe this was actually written as filmed in a script, as no one would write down a sequence of events this stupid

[Grefter]

I would believe it, as an adaptation of how 90s movie studios saw 90s comics, Stallone's Dredd is pitch perfect

[Shale]

That reminds me, tip of the hat to the writer(s)  for including the "betray the law"  line.

[Shale]

More movies!

Looper: Good movie with a great cast and concept, but the pacing sadly turns to crap midway through. You have this really neat premise, you have JGL and Bruce Willis being awesome at each other, you have a script that takes some fairly interesting stabs at the continuity of self, and I'm supposed to care about the creepy kid and his dumbass mom for a quarter of the movie? Sure you don't want to think that through again? It comes together pretty well in the ending, but oy. Lost potential.

(Edit: responding to Gref from back when the movie was in theaters, Cid and Sarah definitely serve a purpose, but building up to it doesn't require nearly as much screentime as they got. It breaks up the flow of the movie and feels like it takes away the opportunity to explore its other themes more thoroughly, or at least to put Joe and Joe in a room together again.)

The Hobbit: Speaking of pacing issues! The movie being long as hell works to its benefit most of the way - including literally everydamnthing from the book and most of the appendices makes for a pretty damn rich world, if nothing else, but when it drags, it drags. The escape from the goblins needed to be about half as long as it was, and the whole orc battle felt totally unnecessary so soon after. Really, Riddles in the Dark should have been the climax. (Gollum was awesome, obviously. Loved the dwarfs, too. And honestly the whole movie would have been worth it just to see Gandalf's guilty-puppy expression in the White Council scene)

Also, after the LOTR films did such a great job with costumes and prosthetics, it's a shame to see them going all-CGI for the villains this time around. I mean, Smaug's not a surprise, but the orcs and goblins and whatnot.

[Grefter]

If you didn't have the establishing time with JGL's character interacting, would you have bought the ending?  Would you have bought the character arc he goes through?  There is definitely some setting porn they could have explored and it would have been incredibly tempting to do so.  A huge part of why I called it the year's Inception was because like Inception it was a Sci Fi movie that established a setting and then ran with a story instead of bogging itself down with minutia of the universe (you can see this as a Thing Grefter Loves in Children of Men also).

I do agree the pacing is all over the shop (I really need to rewatch it), but my memory of it is that it isn't so bad but much more that it is a very different story than you expect them to tell.  The last story about a time traveling hitman that got that kind of budget was significantly different for instance.  You are watching it far enough out from release though that you definitely aren't walking in expecting the action movie the trailers were pushing it as so eh.  Need to review.

[Shale]

Oh, yeah, the parallels to Inception are pretty strong. Both come up with settings that could support high-concept stories, but use them to tell a story in that setting instead of the story of that setting. (Children of Men does this less, but do not imagine this is a bad thing because I do not say bad things about Children of Men. It is not done.) They also subvert the general expectation that a SF movie will have laser guns or whatever, and rest their action scenes on guys shooting each other with regular bullets.

Anyway, yeah, I think I would have bought the ending without as much time on the farm. It might not have been the same exact arc, but there were other ways to get him to that place; bear in mind that he literally spends two-thirds of the movie trying to kill himself. I figured that's what Johnson was going for at first - having Young Joe finally accept that he and Old Joe ARE the same person, that he can't kill him without killing himself no matter what. I do buy the ending as-is, don't get me wrong - but I still would have bought it if 10 or 15 minutes of the lead-in had been replaced with those deleted scenes of Abe and Kid Blue, with another Bruce scene or two to round it out.

[Grefter]

Bare in mind, like I said last post I REALLY need to rewatch this and some of the tiny spoiler font there might just be me remembering the movie I wanted it to be (even more than every scene already was what I wanted it to be as it happened) rather than what was actually put to print.


Ehhh I wouldn't read someone indulging in their self destructive nature specifically as someone who is suicidal per se.   The whole Freudian Thanatos thing is overemphasized on seeking out death.  It is a willful thrust towards things that are not in your best interest and being seated firmly in the Id is a subconscious drive.  Joe definitely isn't happy with his life and so many of his choices are not conducive to staying alive and well (we see that both in young Joe's behaviour and his behaviour in Hong Kong in the alternate timeline of Old Joe).  I wouldn't go so far as to read it as willfully suicidal though.

I see it more as a result of his work (Obviously) and the setting in general.  The bit where they talk about why people choose to be Loopers because it is better to have a chance to live well even if for a short time than to live like normal people do is really pretty central to the character.  He lives like that, but it was kind of forced on him by circumstances.  He is friends with the other loopers, but is distant in that he dreams of a way out.  He isn't happy with his life. 

Rather than him being out and out suicidal it reads to me more like the story of a depressive struggling with his conscious drive towards self destruction (which manifests strongly in people struggling with depression).  Throw in years of desensitization to violence from the setting again and his job, have the only good thing taken from him and give him a time machine and you get Old Joe.

The fact that the ending is a heroic sacrifice is straight up a rejection of all of that.  He kills himself because he sees what he becomes.  He rejects going down the path where his "conquering" his depression and self destruction tempers him to the point where he becomes a child killing spree killer (holy shit the number he pulls on Abe's joint).  Fuck him and fuck his life, who is he A) to judge the Rainmaker he doesn't even know in the future and B) even if he does actively close all the loops and destroys the lives of people like Joe is that really such a bad and wrong thing?

So... I guess I say I agree with your sentiment of he was accepting that he is Old Joe and he can't kill him without killing himself from a different interpretation of why.


Definitely not to say suicide is the right answer to depression.  Just that hey maybe possibly it is if you have a time machine and future you is a child killing headcase with a severe case of PTSD that manifests itself in extreme violence.

Edit - And holy shit all that WORDS WORDS WORDS reminded me of how much I fucking loved that movie.  Why didn't I find an excuse to go see it again?

[Shale]

I think we agree about Young Joe's character, we're just using different words. He's not suicidal, and yet he's still desperately trying to kill himself with a shotgun - that's part of what makes him so interesting. He doesn't like his life that much, but has no interest in dying. Yet, of course, he's put himself in a situation where the only way for him to survive is to murder himself, and he has to somehow reconcile that - thus the insistence that Old Joe is literally a different person. He's fucked up, but not in a clinical depression sort of way.

[Grefter]

He is functional so I wouldn't diagnose it as clinical.  I suppose since I am using Freudian terminology to describe it I may as well reach even further back and just say he is classically melancholic.

[Lady Door]

Saw Oz. It was enjoyable, but not particularly excellent. Was forced to see it in 3D, and since it was geared a little more toward a young audience it had its share of gimmicky 3D tricks. Some day I will get to see a movie in the theater without gimmicks, but I think it's been over a year since I saw a movie that wasn't in IMAX and/or 3D.

James Franco made an excellent dark Oz, but despite his and Raimi's best efforts this movie was more cheese than dark fairy-tale. Mila Kunis will forever be Meg Griffin so it was really goddamned hard to take her character seriously, which was kind of a problem. Zach Braff, too, was a little too much Zach Braff for me to get into the "character" he was supposed to be playing.

Had some witty bits. The first third or so was definitely the best part of the movie. The middle and ending felt weirdly forced, rushed and mish-mashed. It had potential, but it wasn't able to successfully balance the camp with the serious, and so it kind of failed at both.

I'm sure it has delightful nods to the original material, including the 1930s film, but I'm not a big enough fan to have caught them.

I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to yell "Shut up, Meg!" at the screen. I am ashamed.

[AndrewRogue]

Saw Oz. It was enjoyable, but not particularly excellent. Was forced to see it in 3D, and since it was geared a little more toward a young audience it had its share of gimmicky 3D tricks. Some day I will get to see a movie in the theater without gimmicks, but I think it's been over a year since I saw a movie that wasn't in IMAX and/or 3D.

James Franco made an excellent dark Oz, but despite his and Raimi's best efforts this movie was more cheese than dark fairy-tale. Mila Kunis will forever be Meg Griffin so it was really goddamned hard to take her character seriously, which was kind of a problem. Zach Braff, too, was a little too much Zach Braff for me to get into the "character" he was supposed to be playing.

Had some witty bits. The first third or so was definitely the best part of the movie. The middle and ending felt weirdly forced, rushed and mish-mashed. It had potential, but it wasn't able to successfully balance the camp with the serious, and so it kind of failed at both.

I'm sure it has delightful nods to the original material, including the 1930s film, but I'm not a big enough fan to have caught them.

I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to yell "Shut up, Meg!" at the screen. I am ashamed.

[Captain K.]

Les Mis:  Wow they changed a lot.  I was really surprised at the scene where Wolverine gutted Javert and then Borat teabagged his corpse.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Life of Pi - Not really my favorite. It's a very slow movie with a decent ending. Probably wouldn't have finished it if I'd been watching it alone, though; I am a bit impatient.

Avatar - A little heavyhanded, but great otherwise! Very colorful and fun.