Movies

[Meeplelard]

Iron Man 2: Saw this, was fun, but nothing special.

Sherlock Holmes: Also saw this!  Also fun stuff.  My father made the interesting comment of "You don't like the guy, but you still root for him"; can't say I disagree.  Did like how they handled how they showed Holmes go from Point A to Point Q with evidence, and showed that he wasn't just ass pulling, going into showing that even slight details served a purpose.  Death Note could learn a thing or two, since not all genius needs to be "hay, i second guessed j00!" like Light Yagami did, which gets old...fast...

There were actually some moments I did pick up on, but just disregarded them as unimportant.  Like the part where the guy gets set on fire; I did notice that it was raining when he got in there, and it wasn't raining right after the meeting.  Of course rain can stop within that time frame, so I just assume we're to think that's the case, but yeah, just shows attention to detail or something, which is nice.

So yeah, good stuff overall.  I actually saw this in two sittings for reasons not really related to the movie itself, but whatever, felt like it didn't really detract cause outside of the big reveal of everything at the end, most stuff feels so short term, so its easy to just pick up where you left off.

Godzilla 2000: Rewatched this cause my brother happened to be watching it.  All I can say is the movie should be renamed "Fuck you Roland Emmerich."  Cause seriously, the only reason this movie was made (and the entire Millenium series by extension) was cause of that 1998 American "Remake" fucked up the premise so much.  Supposedly, Toho actually tried to talk to Emmerich, to give him pointers and ideas, such to capture the style of their movies and make the movie enjoyable, and such, and he just went "Fuck you, I do what I want!"  which explains...a lot.  So the movie was made in retaliation, and you could see they were mocking him what with ID4 style Aliens Blowing Up Buildings, and heck, Orga midtransformation even LOOKS like those aliens.

That said, fun stuff. The dubbing is horrible, but its awesome at the same time cause it was INTENTIONALLY horrible, to tease the older movies.  And the whole "Well we're fucked" ending is a nice touch.  Though, the CG looks really bad in this movie; you could tell Toho had little experience with this kind of stuff, as it looks really forced, contrasts the other special effects in the movie, and...hell, there's a part with CG Helicopters exploding (instead of the usual prop style), which looks really animated rather than genuine.  Its really no wonder they don't use CG much in the movies after this; I can't blame them for trying something new at the time, but it still looked awful.

[Sierra]

"Fuck you Roland Emmerich."

This can never be said enough.

Also watched Sherlock Holmes last night. Seconding the Meeple, it was fun, etc. Holmes's inferences are generally drawn from his having a mental map of the city he lived in, which is nice and also an extension of one of the things I liked best about the movie: it has a distinct sense of place and effectively captures a grimy, gritty, lived-in London. Looks great even when it's ugly. I enjoyed the music too, thrums along nicely without ever quite being generic Hollywood Tension Music. ...Ah, Hans Zimmer. That would do it.

[Captain K.]

Up:  Pretty weak for a Pixar movie.  The tear-jerkerness is crammed down your throat too much.

Iron Man 2:  Enjoyable, only really suffers from not being groundbreaking like the first one.  Boss fight is better than the last movie, but once again ends too abruptly.  Black Widow + Happy Hogan movie nao.

Babies:  Hard to review a movie that doesn't have a plot.  Suffice it to say that Namibians are hardcore, and Mongolians have the best pacifiers¹ and the worst baths².

¹A piece of meat that you suck on (with a match speared through it so you don't swallow it)
²Your mom squirts her breast milk on your face and then wipes your face with it.

[Meeplelard]

Varan the Unbelievable: Why am I watching obscure as fuck Kaiju, let alone the American complete realtering of this movie?

...

...anyway, I wasted about 68 minutes of my life watching this and I want it back!  I don't know if the Japanese version is better or not, but gah was this boring.  Its like watching the original Gamera again or something.

[NotMiki]

and then you wrote about it.

[Cotigo]

The Book of Eli: Saw the first hour of this.  It bored me.  Wow, so post-apocalyptic means you spend a lot of time alone walking on roads with no dialogue.  Bored now.

It IS a pretty glaring flaw of the entire genre pretty much except for the Road Warrior, where they replaced their road scenes with car fights, and Fallout, where they replaced the weeks of walking with a map.

Shit works a lot better in print.  Read The Road by McCarthy now.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I'd rather not do that again. It was a very unpleasant experience.

[Cotigo]

You just don't like good things.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I can only take so much depressing adventure about eating people. Sorry.

[Grefter]

Oh man I have to read this now.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Robin Hood - Not too bad.

The good: Cate Blanchett is awesome. In general, having older heroes instead of boring plucky young folks is nice (perhaps RPGs could learn from this?!?!). I like Russell Crowe well enough, but he was kinda low key. King John was played quite nicely; they captured the essence of an arrogant, slightly incompetent prettyboy nicely. The main villain is thoroughly detestable. I also liked a lot of the dialogue and the buildup on the politician intrigue. The battle stuff at the beginning of the movie was very neat, and I think the encounter with the king sets up the plot quite nicely. Also, very interesting take on King Richard. I think that the casting is quite well done in general.

The bad: Kind of hokey at times (very cliched blathering about liberty and law in one particular scene), the army battle was outright awful and although it needed to exist, it didn't need to make me dizzy or be as absurdly hokey as it was when it ended. I also think the movie needed more focus; I felt like there were parts that just didn't need to exist, like anything related to the orphans.  I think the movie also changes PoV too much; sometimes, they should just stick to an important part and run with it. For example, they introduce Maid Marion before she's really important just for the sake of it; I feel like they should have just introduced that section right before Robin actually goes to meet her.

Things I don't care about that people like to bitch about in these types of movies: Historical accuracy. I think that it is reasonably historically accurate compared to some of the other Robin Hood tales, but I'm really no expert. I had a friend with me at the theatre who seemed to be unhappy about it but I'm not really sure.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

In general, having older heroes instead of boring plucky young folks is nice (perhaps RPGs could learn from this?!?!).

You're just not playing the right ones.

[Excal]

John, Godfrey, and the Sheriff of Nottingham were all love, yes.  The northern Barons less so because their plot brings Robin to the whole give me liberty or give me death stuff.

Also noticed a couple of actors from the Sharpe series, which was nice.  Seems that one guy is making his way in the movie industry being that old English Army fiddler/singer guy.  Kinda there in army sequences, but is usually singing a catchy tune in the background when it's quiet.

Anyways, generally seconding Ciato here.  First half is pretty dang neat, second half is saved only by John, because Godfrey gets boring here, and Robin goes all Gary Stu.  Whereas John just delightfully chews the scenery in a completely douchy fashion.  The parts I especially disliked were the random villagers in the army seqeunce, God Mode Hood, and...  oh yes, more Gary Stuing of the Hood, and the randomness of certain other people showing up in the final battle.  I didn't mind the camera angles, but my suspension of disbelief was basically shot from Robin's backstory to the end of the movie outside of the Nottingham fight and anything involving John or the Sheriff.

As for historical accuracy, I think you're confusing people with that one particular friend.  He has some...  odd thoughts at times, and I suspect this was one of them.  I mean, really.  Who goes to a freakin' Robin Hood movie for historical accuracy?  Fortunately, you missed the discourse on the Magna Carta and how it totally wasn't signed that early.  >_>

[Dark Holy Elf]

(spoilers)

And to be fair it isn't signed in the movie either. (Now, you can say it's proposed too early of course, but eh, now we're getting into the reaaally minor as far as historical inaccuracies in movies go.)

[Excal]

You say that like it's supposed to keep those types of things from being brought up.

[Meeplelard]

Fantastic Four 2 Rocky 5 Return of the Jedi Part Revolutions Part 3: Finally saw this.  Its decent enough, though unlike Spiderman 2 which was better than the first in almost every way, I got more of a "generic sequel" vibes from this.  Fun, but nothing special.

[Excal]

Iron Man 2 - After everything I had been hearing I had been kind of debating whether or not this movie was worth seeing.  It was.  Shifts gears a bit in the middle, but mostly from a general Robert Downey Jr. fucks the world and tells them to enjoy it, because he sure as hell is, to a more standard Super Hero movie.

This makes it superior to Robin Hood, which while generally superior in its good half, is abysmal in its bad half.  And this was pretty damn enjoyable the whole way through.

[superaielman]

Watchmen- Watched. I enjoyed the hell out of it as a movie, though I'm not familiar with the source material. What did the fans here think of it?

[Cmdr_King]

Quite good, obviously went to a lot of effort to be faithful outside some very specific changes/omissions that are clear cases of "original works in a comic but not so much a movie" or "dammit, we don't have the space/time to cover this fully".  Even did a good job of inserting background shots that covered some of the post-chapter supplemental stuff.

[Shale]

Loved it as a fan of the original, wasn't sure how it would work for somebody who's never read the book. Wasn't wild about the way they handled Ozymandias, but that's about it.

Up: Great movie. Didn't feel they needed the villain to be quite as villainy has he was, but it turned out very fun so I can't really complSQUIRREL!

[Scar]

I had to explain Watchmen and the plot to like all my (comicbook) friends. Great movie.

[Clear Tranquil]

Yeah watched the Watchmen with super, style rocked, music rocked and I really enjoyed some of the characters. In particular Rorschach (whom my bad hearing designated as Crooshanks - super had to correct me >.>) and Doctor Manhattan~

Reading up on Wikepedia about it now =-)

[Hunter Sopko]

Did you watch the Director's Cut? Night Owl I's death scene is pretty awesome, but it sticks out pretty awkwardly so it's understandable why they cut it.

[Scar]

Awww, I missed that. That always did hit me as one of the more emotional scenes in the comic.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I don't remember Nite Owl and Silk Spectre killing that many people, though.