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Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

Discussion in 'General' started by knuck, 13 Jun 2010.

  1. Pookie

    Pookie Illegitimi non carborundum

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    I watched Apocalypto last night. 9/10

    Subtitled all the way through but after a while you forget. Stunning film with an amzing plot and attention to detail. Highly reccomended :thumb:
     
  2. Gunsmith

    Gunsmith Maximum Win

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    the iron giant - Feels/10

    **** YOU I'M NOT CRYING!
     
  3. d_stilgar

    d_stilgar Old School Modder

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    http://mondotees.com/collections/toys/products/ig-bolt-replica

    Not the sort of thing I would get myself but definitely something I wish someone would buy me.

    Automata - 8/10

    Good. Different. I have a weakness for hard sci-fi, even if it isn't strictly good. This movie deals with similar issues as Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics, although they are somewhat different in this movie. It also deals with an interesting bit of theology I've been thinking about recently that I think would be interesting to explore in storytelling (whether movie, book, comic), which is the idea that God gives men weakness that they might be humble. It's a bit of Mormon theology found in Ether 12:27. Anyway, there has been a lot of talk recently about AI and the end of humanity. I don't think the fear is unreasonable, and it's come from some pretty smart people, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk to name a couple. I think it would be interesting to tell a story where we create AI, but purposefully build in glitches/weakness to purposefully keep the AI from killing us all or just taking over. It could then deal with similar themes we face as a society.

    Anyway, long ramble over the movie explores some ideas I've been thinking a lot about lately and is hard sci-fi so I my rating may be a bit inflated, but if you're interested in similar ideas then it's a good watch.

    Noah - 6/10

    Again, a movie that deals with creation myth, theology, and an a bible story. It's a Darren Aronofsky film . . . in every possible way. It has amazing visuals and layers of symbols, but isn't as good as it wishes it was. One of my best friends said The Fountain (also an Aronofsky film) was, "the best bad movie you'll ever see." Noah is similar. It takes wide liberties in the telling of the Noah story from the bible to help explore the themes of the story in the media of film instead of text. It loses its way when there's a stupid battle with golems and man, but . . . Hollywood. The fallen angel golems are animated in a way that looks like it could be stop motion, which stylistically is interesting considering it is dealing with an ancient tale. Again, Aronofsky makes some amazing decisions in this film, but it loses its way about halfway through and I was left bored by the end.

    Monuments Men - 7/10

    If you already like and value art, then you'll really enjoy this film. If you don't, then you'll like the scene where they find a lot of gold. Otherwise . . . it's not that great. It's a good by-the-book war drama, little more. It has a nice A-list ensemble cast. The budget was high and the locations are beautiful. It takes far fewer risks than Noah or Automata, so there isn't a lot of reward.
     
  4. EvilMerc

    EvilMerc Minimodder

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    The Imitation Game 9/10

    Some superb acting from Cumberbatch and an excellent story. The occasional touch of humour is great despite its serious premise. All in all a very good watch which I can wholeheartedly recommend.
     
  5. Pookie

    Pookie Illegitimi non carborundum

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    Looks like I'll be watching "Fury" tonight :naughty:
     
  6. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    Still stuck at "Fury" eh?
     
  7. stonedsurd

    stonedsurd Is a cackling Yuletide Belgian

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    Finally saw Interstellar, enjoyed the hell out of it - 8/10

    Only major complaint was
    "the Others."
    Felt a little too "2001-ish" and largely unnecessary. For instance,
    the only two big things that they were used to explain away was the appearance of the wormhole and Cooper's ability to see and understand the five dimensions beyond the black hole. These could just as well have been done away with - the wormhole just appeared (random chance, the universe is full of it) and Cooper's black hole experience could have just been a cool black hole experience without someone supernatural holding his hand through it. Heck, just use the sappy "love" angle to explain his ability to survive the BH. I didn't like the love thing either TBH, but I suppose it wasn't as pointless as the Others.
     
  8. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I saw Prometheus recently (yeah, I know I'm late to the party here). I was distinctly underwhelmed. :blah:

    Don't get me wrong: the special effects are nice and lush, even if the ship seems Tardis-like spacious: bigger on the inside than the outside. But:

    First off, I don't get the whole reason for the film. It was meant to answer questions left by ALIEN, such as: where did the aliens come from? How did they end up on board the Space Jockey ship? Who or what was the Space Jockey? But ALIEN works better without having those answers, because it leaves the viewer to speculate and wonder. Because this is space, bitches, and in space, weird **** happens. That's what makes it scary.

    So big fail one: Prometheus isn't scary. It isn't even very mysterious.

    Big fail two: The best scenes were cut from the cinematic version --especially the scene between Idris Elba's ship captain Janek and Charlize Theron's Meredith Vickers. This was not just a nice relationship piece between, frankly, the most interesting characters in the story, but also a good explanation of what they had actually stumbled upon, and why we should be afraid, be very afraid.

    Big fail three: the central characters of the story: Elizabeth Shaw and boyfriend Charlie Holoway, are also the most boring. Every other crew member seems more interesting. Janek and Vickers had potential to steal the show, but they get minor parts and then their best bits got cut.

    Big fail four: the ending.
    Shaw and David hijack an Engineer ship to visit their world and ask "why they changed their mind" about the humans. First: as if you have to ask (it never occurs to Shaw that David does not feel the need to ask because perhaps he already has worked out the answer). Second: as if their response is going to differ any from that of the first Engineer who tried to kill them. Third, I would think that my priority would be to get back to Earth and warn everybody about what may be coming our way to clean the petri dish.

    So yeah, distinctly underwhelmed.
     
  9. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Also...

    [​IMG]
     
  10. SuicideNeil

    SuicideNeil What's a Dremel?

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    And the rest ( screw spoilers, this film was such a let down after waiting literally my whole frickin life for it ):



    There are plenty more not mentioned in the video- pointless characters you only see once, the oddly advanced ship & tech even though this is set ~100 years before Alien, android poisoning people why again?, starmap to a weapons facility why? ( and turning up thousands of years late and expecting to find them still ), Captain doesn't give 2 sh*ts when 2 crew end up stranded, magic ooze, learn an Alien language based on unrelated ancient languages how?, the list goes on & on- the CGI was great, the cast had potential, but the story and characters made no sense and were squandered terribly. Damn you Ridley Scott.
     
  11. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    Redemption 5/10

    In three words: Statham with feelings.
    A lot worse than it sounds. Boring.

    The Return Of The First Avenger 7/10 AKA: Captain Amerika: The Winter Soldier

    A lot of boom bang and weird physics and silly guns, entertaining. Not completely dependent on movies-to-have-seen-previously* to enjoy.

    *I’m sure it exists, but slowly, I need a guide in which order to watch all these Avenger movies just to understand what is going on in the latest one. :D
     
  12. Lance

    Lance Ender of discussions.

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    The Hobbit: battle of 5 army's 7/10.

    I really enjoyed this, action was great, battle was well done and exciting. I really like Martin freeman as bilbo and the dwarfs in battle were literally awesome.

    What I didn't like was the use of too many silly skits and one or two of the action sequences were a bit too far fetched.

    Overall a great end to the series, and it didn't drag on like return of the king did, it very much ended like the story needs to go on. Now time to watch LOTR extended back to back.
     
  13. d_stilgar

    d_stilgar Old School Modder

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    Fast and Furious 6 - 5/10

    I watched all of them in about a week's time. I could say a lot about how bad they all are, but they all suck very much. What makes 5 and 6 okay is that the franchise finally seems to be okay with the fact that it is completely ridiculous. There are plenty of cars that can do an 8 second quarter mile, but every singe quarter mile race in the series lasts several minutes, with way too much car play and steering wheel going on. Nothing about the films ever makes any real sense, so just take the plot at face value and turn your brain off.

    Having finally seen the 6th movie, I stand by my opinion that the third movie, Tokyo Drift, is the only reasonably good film. Why? Well, we've had five films with the same characters, and not since the beginning of the whole series has any one of them changed a single bit. In the sixth movie, one character is told, "You are a dad now, no more of these crazy adventures," and then 10 minutes later his wife/girlfriend is like, "I would feel much safer if both my brother and my husband/boyfriend were risking their lives on a silly car adventure." So he goes. Same story, same characters, no growth.

    In Tokyo Drift, however, we have a kid from the US south who thinks he is "all-that." He causes a lot of trouble when he destroys two cars and many expensive, under-construction homes. He doesn't feel remorse because other people were racing too and partially because the only thing he lost was the time he put into his junky old car.

    The rich kid he was racing gets away without consequence, but he is sent to Japan (read "wilderness" from the monomyth or hero's journey). Having learned nothing, he races again, this time with someone else's expensive car, again, not seeing consequences. This lack of accountability for his actions is his weakness. This is symbolized through his complete inability to drive. In this race, he dents the car in the first turn, but instead of seeing his error, he pushes on stubbornly, eventually limping across the finish line with a completely wrecked car.

    He now owes Han, the man who lent his car to him, a new car, and comes under Han's employ to work it off. Han is "the guru" in the monomyth, the man who will show the protagonist his way through the wilderness, show him his weakness, force him to face it, and help him grow. We have a montage of the main character learning to drive.

    At the end of the movie there is one last race, against the man our protagonist was handily defeated by right after going to Japan. This race ends where the first race ended, and is being held as a way to pay off debt and regain honor. The race is a way to take accountability for a mistake, showing that the protagonist has grown. In the monomyth the hero almost always faces the thing that defeated them earlier, but wins the second time around. We see this a lot in movies. Karate Kid, Star Wars, every JRPG ever. Knowing how bad they were beaten before makes you see how far they have come when facing the challenge again. It's a measuring stick.

    So, yeah. The third movie is actually somewhat good. It does in one film what the others couldn't do in five. It isn't a masterclass in storytelling, and asks you to suspend your disbelief just as much as the others, but it at least does so with purpose, with symbols, with a message/moral. That's more than any of the other films in the franchise can say.
     
  14. Aterius Gmork

    Aterius Gmork smell the ashes

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    The Hobbit 3: 6/10

    As a fanboy I didn't like the mood of the movie. Still, the CGI doesn't suck this time around so it is worth a view. Dain the dwarf is awesome.

    My biggest gripe with the moive is the stupid way the white council banishes Sauron from Dol Guldur to Angmar. Gandalf and Saruman ar Istari, as such they would never display so much power. Galadriel the elven witch is just plain stupid. The wraiths have no power over the real world but the power of deception and terror yet in the Jackson movies they do battle like demigods.

    Also Jackson concentrates too much on the battle against the two generals. Almost an hour to kill two enemies, but Smaug is killed off in ten minutes? No feasting, no farewells, no journey home? The movie feels bloodless.

    I can't help but feel that del Toro would have been the better director.
     
  15. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    I saw it yesterday at the BFI IMAX (first film I'd ever seen there), thought the film was fairly good, but I wished I'd read the Hobbit again recently so I could remember which bits were added in :p

    Also I felt a lot of the film was just blurry and I got a bit of a headache, so not sure I'll be going back there haha, especially at that price.
     
  16. stonedsurd

    stonedsurd Is a cackling Yuletide Belgian

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    Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt.1 - 6/10

    Much more angsty than the preceding one, but at least that arena nonsense is gone (fun though it was, it never made much sense to me).

    JLaw makes it 5/10, the rest 1/10, only watch if you have little else to do (as I did).
     
  17. stonedsurd

    stonedsurd Is a cackling Yuletide Belgian

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    Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt.1 - 6/10

    Much more angsty than the preceding one, but at least that arena nonsense is gone (fun though it was, it never made much sense to me).

    JLaw makes it 5/10, the rest 1/10, only watch if you have little else to do (as I did).
     
  18. Archtronics

    Archtronics Minimodder

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    The Hobbit 3 5/10

    I was pretty disappointed with this tbh the battle scenes seemed really disjointed, I didn't really get the sense one side was winning or loosing I wish they had stuck a little closer to how it's depicted in the book.

    The love back storey that has run through the films is also annoying and adds nothing.

    Overall it was cgi over story and leave the whole thing awkwardly unfinshed. At the end of the day Tolkien is a better storey teller than Jackson.
     
  19. Kronos

    Kronos Multimodder

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    Doom. Absolute rubbish. Poor story, stereotypical characters particularly the so called special forces which Hollywood as usual depicts as a bunch of unpleasant soldiers who do not work as a team and all have issues. Why Hollywood feels the need to have people with guns cocking their weapons every five minutes escapes me. Gave up half way through.

    The Maze Runner. Why did I waste nearly two hours of my life watching this? I have little clue what the film was about, some post apocalyptical experiment I think. Trying to cash in on the Hunger Game theme I suspect. Cannot recommend.
     
  20. zenobia

    zenobia What's a Dremel?

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    I watched yesterday The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1.

    Although, I know it was only part one but a bit disappointed how it end.
     

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