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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. SuperHans123

    SuperHans123 Multimodder

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    Storyline? Uncheck?
    Characterization? Uncheck.

    I watched it for just over an hour and then thought, 'why am I wasting my life watching this garbage?'
     
  2. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Homefront - Standard Jason Statham /10

    Usual stuff - Jason beats the crap out of some bad guys, there are guns and explosions. Unusually high amount of well known actors/actresses in it: Winona Ryder, James Franco, Clancy Brown. There are worse ways you could waste less than two hours.
     
  3. ModSquid

    ModSquid Multimodder

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    Alien Resurrection - 6.5/10
    "Drink, Elgyn?"
    "Constantly."

    Brilliant.

    Plus Aqualiens (is no environment safe?). But the franchise starts to go downhill from here. Point of note - no idea how they can make all the creature/other effects so realistic but be unable to generate a believable explosion in space. Also sets a new non-Arnie record for number of explosions from one grenade in a non-volatile environment. Now if they can find their way to filmarising the Dark Horse work dealing with the infestation of Earth and subsequent dramas, then there might be some hope.

    "Earth, man. What a shithole."
    Wildly prophetic for '97...

    As a sidenote, Sue still looks great these days at 72ish - think she might actually have been kept in stasis after all...
     
  4. IamJudd

    IamJudd Multimodder

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    Sue?! Oh... right! My little pre-pubescent crush along with Kelly LeBrock from Woman in Red and Weird Science... Still... Sigourney possessed in GB was certainly eye-opening along with her leg-opening!

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Xlog

    Xlog Minimodder

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    Dune 2020/2021 - 9/10. First film in 10 years that made me go to the cinema.

    As a film its top notch - the score, cinematography, fx, art direction - it all blends to an Experience.
    As a book reader I miss some of the plot points / world building that were cut, but can't see how they could be incorporated into the film without making it 5+ hours long.
    For audience that are not familiar with source material, i could see how some things might be confusing or are not explained at all in the film, I just hope that that wont tank audience's interest in it and part 2 will be made.
     
  6. Gunsmith

    Gunsmith Maximum Win

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    i didnt think it was out until next month?
     
  7. Xlog

    Xlog Minimodder

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    Release dates for dune are weird, half of EU and some asian countries got it last week, middle east is getting it on 23rd and rest of the wold in october. WB being WB I guess.
     
  8. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    Mojin: The Lost Legend - 5/10
    Another Chinese movie, and slowly I think Chinese just have a different feel for timing and pacing than we do.
    Effects are good, the story so-so, good action.
     
  9. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    Flight of the Navigator

    Marmite/10

    I got the blu-ray (which is rare, and expensive, and beautiful both physically as an object and visually as a film restoration).

    This film is totally marmite; you either like what it's doing or you don't, because what it's doing is unusual, dated and quirky. It's a tone rollercoaster, from silly childish humour and 'back-to-the-future hoverboard' level antics and effects through to Stephen King-esque dread and suspense and heavy-hitting sci-fi drama.

    The basic premise, without giving more than the first 10 minutes away, is that a kid falls over in the woods, returns home and inexplicably finds that 8 years have passed. Naturally UFOs are involved, which audiences going in would have known from the posters, and they have a lot of fun bait-and-switching the first on-screen appearance of the UFO to hilarious effect.

    The time skip is heavy stuff, though. They could have handled it in a whacky sit-com way, or as a cool Tintin adventure of curiosity, but they don't; it's treated very realistically, with all the confusion and trauma that this would cause for a child (and his family). Some of the scenes of him meeting and speaking to his family after the time skip are still really affecting and hard to watch.

    It feeds off a lot of the same culture that X-Files did, so immediately there are untrustworthy government officials, prodding scientists, danger, uncertainty and scary implications. What do the ratings boards call it now? "Mild peril." But it's treated in quite a mature way. There's no whiff of Home Alone about his odds of outsmarting/outrunning these people.

    They're presented as 3-dimensional people, too - not villified or simplified. They have their own motives and problems. The situation, even at its most dire, is not presented as the sinister machinations of any one character or group, but as an unfortunate coinciding of everyone's different actions and motives, which is pretty grown-up and emotionally intelligent for a kids film from the 80s.

    The special effects are balls-to-the-wall impressive for the time, as detailed in this VFXCool documentary episode on Youtube, which I would only recommend watching after the film, because it spoils everything. But it is amazing what they did to make this film's visuals. It's let down a bit by the inclusion of old-school puppeteering and creature models, which haven't aged badly so much as they've never, ever looked particularly good, but they only show up in the film's lighter moments, so tension and drama in the film's more important scenes are never spoilt by them.

    The child acting is really good. I always admire good child acting when I see it, partly because I can imagine how difficult and complicated it is to achieve and partly because I've seen how badly wrong it can go (cough, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, cough).

    The reason it's marmite is because it is a kid's film from the 80s; it contains kid elements (the puppeteered creatures and characters, the indulgent flights of fancy, the often wonky and dated humour). It exists in a similar place in history to Neverending Story, and has a lot of the same appeal, but it's a simpler, slower-paced and more intellectual thing.

    It's often said that Flight of the Navigator is mainly remembered by those who first watched it in the 80s and 90s, when they were below the age of 10. I disagree, simply because I first watched it in my 30s and immediately loved it. I consider it a cut above most kids films, and especially above a lot of the awful dross targetted at kids during the 80s and 90s. It ain't another Labyrinth, put it that way.

    (I ****ing hate Labyrinth.)

    I can't help but wonder how much of the weird pacing of Chinese films is due to executive meddling halfway through the creative process for political reasons. I infer (but don't exactly know) that when a film is made in China, or imported into China, some government department goes through a lengthy back-and-forth with the creators about what they don't like, and the creators' options are then: change it, or don't release the film. You can imagine that causing some strange pacing results.
     
    Last edited: 24 Sep 2021
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  10. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Boss Level: 8/10

    Never been quite sure what to make of Frank Grillo, but he finally pulls off a film in which I actually like him. Don't get me wrong, not a classic by any means, but absolutely watchable, with good action scenes and a good sense of humour. Also refreshing to see a film in this day and age that doesn't feel the need to force diversity into the mix and actually has the main character develop over the course of the film.

    In conclusion, certainly worth investing just over 90 minutes at some point if you fancy a movie with some good action and straightforward values.
     
  11. souper82

    souper82 Retired 'n' Lovin It !

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    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944835/
    I decided to watch SALT again, i like a good thriller'esqe type of movie. My wife was really surprised at the twist towards the end totally surprised the C*rap out of her. Angelina Jolie at her best with
    Liev Schreiber - a great combination !
     
  12. BA_13

    BA_13 Minimodder

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    Agreed, saw this last night at our local Cinema and would also say 9/10, however my 11 year old step daughter wouldn't rate higher than 2/10 and one of those points is for the Haribo.
    I am a little surprised at the point at which they have decided to split the story as to my mind it isn't at the half way point more like a third of the way in, in terms of the cinematography it made me think of Bladerunner 2049 (just looked up the director of 2049 and I now know why). Anyway fingers crossed for part 2 actually turning up.
     
  13. souper82

    souper82 Retired 'n' Lovin It !

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    Yeah, totally agree with you. I'd love too see a part 2.
    My two other fave movies are Close Encounters of the Third Kind & Enter The Dragon both of which i saw in the cinema over thirty times each (before video's/dvd's etc) it's only now when i think of it; how much money i must have spent over the years going to the cinema, god only knows how much it would have cost at todays prices. :worried:
     
    Last edited: 26 Sep 2021
  14. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    ZeroZeroZero - 6/10

    While not bad as a story, and very nice optically, it's just too little story to fill 8 episodes.
    It might have made a nice 2 Hr. movie, but as it is it's jaut too damn long with too many flashbacks.

    While i think that's entirely possible, I think it is indeed a cultural thing.
    The weird pacing is mostly in movies made for the chinese market, that get released here on DVD years later.
    In movies that were made with an international audience in mind, like Matt Damon's "The great Wall", it's pretty much absent.
     
  15. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    And just like that, you have my attention.
     
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  16. Xir

    Xir Modder

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    Breaking Surface - 6/10
    While it takes a lot of liberties with diving accuracy, I suppose it's all for the purpose of non-divers understanding what's going on.
    Apart from that, it's a bit of a "Murphy's Law" movie, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, but if it wouldn't the movie would be only 30mins long.
     
  17. enbydee

    enbydee Minimodder

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    Green Knight. It's good, a lovely looking film and interesting exploration of motivation and honour. imdb seems to have been review bombed by people with an undue obsession with the original text, I'm staggered there are that many medieval literalists out there, i'm sure it's not being used as a shield to have a go at a gawain of colour.
     
  18. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    Niche interest subcultures like that are dangerous for popular media creators, because the subculture nerds are so starved for content that they'll just jump on anything that appears in their corner and rip it to pieces. C.f. that History Buffs guy on YouTube and his ridiculously pernickety reviews of loosely historical films. He hates Mel Gibson, hates Braveheart and Apocalypto in particular. He almost completely misses the point of both films in favour of freaking out about "they didn't even HAVE this style of temple in south America until a hundred years later!!! as if that's got a dry hump to do with whether a film is good or not.

    Experienced filmmakers probably just learn to ignore the special subject nerds, because there's no pleasing them and they're not even, at base, concerned with art as art - they're just reviewing it as historical document, which is about as on-point as leaving a McDonald's review raging about the lack of nutritional balance.
     
  19. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Reminds me of looking at some of the reviews of Dunkirk (2017), which is a crackingly good film IMHO. There are several 1 star reviews from people saying things like 'that's not how a boat sinks' or 'there were way more civilian craft in real life'. In my head I just make a 'whoosh' noise.
     
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  20. souper82

    souper82 Retired 'n' Lovin It !

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    Dunkirk - In nine days, 192,226 British and 139,000 French soldiers – more than 331,000 total – were rescued by the 700 little ships and around 220 warships. The rescue operation turned a military disaster into a story of heroism which served to raise the morale of the British........ Just Sayin :blush:
     

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