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

I thought about going to see Elysium this weekend, went to see 2 Guns instead... I won't bother now based on the reviews here.

 

Moonrise Kingdom - 9/10

Wes Anderson's latest quirky film. A tad slow to get going but I really enjoyed it, a bit strange but refreshing not to be full of plastic looking hollywood made-up actors!

If you want a strange but nice film

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with a happy ending

watch this film!

 

Hey, hey, hey!

Sharknado is on Syfy right now.

I've seen 10 minutes of it - it's so bad I'm recording it, to savour later, in all it's HD cheesiness!

 

Riddick = 5/10

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If you have seen Pitch Black, you've seen this one.

 

Tintin - 7/10

Grew up reading the Tintin books so I was looking forward to this but never got around to seeing it on the big screen. I thought it was pretty enjoyable, sure they took a few liberities and changed things around a bit but that's par for the course with film adaptations.

I know a lot of people didn't like it and objected to the changes as well as some of the basic character traits and and most Americans probably wouldn't know who Tintin is but there are rumbles of a sequel which I welcome.

P.S. - I thought Bianca Castafiore looked like Meryl Streep in a fat suit, then I remembered that's how the character looked in the books.

 

I liked the cameo at the very start -

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The street artist painting Tintin is his creator, Hergé.

 

Iron Man 3 6/10

Action was good but

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I can't believe they reduced the Mandarin, One of Stark's main enemies, to simply an actor playing a terrorist for Killian to hide behind (although I did like the reference to The Leader)

 

Rush

Awesome, awesome film. I can safely say that seventies Formula 1 cars are by far the most intimidating movie monsters I've seen in years. One thing though, not for the weak stomached,

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Niki Lauda's injuries should be obvious (and had several people with heads in their hands), but there's other stuff too, notably a loving shot of Francois Cevert's dismembered corpse still strapped into his Tyrrell.

Also, every time Lauda and Regazzoni talk to each other is comedy gold...

 

Oblivion 5/10

It was okay, but the plot twist's were fairly obvious (even without seeing any of the trailers before hand).

 

R.I.P.D - 8/10.

Funny, well paced, decent acting, decent effects, made as much sense as it had to. Can't complain really!

 

Red - 6/10

This film is - despite having an impressive cast - utterly silly, so you'd think it didn't take itself seriously. And that's the problem, it doesn't seem to be able to gauge its own silliness and thus ends up thinking it's a serious movie. It isn't. It's not even a good movie, but rather distinctly sub-par. However, there's one scene in the entire movie which made me rate it a 6/10 rather than the generous 4/10 that it otherwise deserves. That scene involves Bruce Willis stepping out of a car (whilst firing a handgun) in such a cool, nonchalant, over-the-top, Hollywood way that the scene in itself is reason enough to watch the movie.

 

I actually really enjoyed Red (so much so that I cannot wait for the 2nd one to come out on BR (unfortunately I missed it in the cinema)).

I loved the fact that it took itself so serious while at the same time being so completely OTT with it's action sequences (like John Malkovich shooting a rocket out of the air with a handgun with a snide "Old, my A**!" comment). I think it's actually become one of my top 10 films.

 

There will be blood: 9/10.

Wonderful acting on the part of Daniel Day Lewis. And the plot was rather nice. Admittedly there were some rather spotty parts, but I enjoyed the slow downward spiral towards insanity and his pure unadulterated anger.

Rather reminiscient of Kubrick might I say.

Also, Goodfellas: 10/10.

Love the hilarious psychotic actions of all the main characters. One of the best gang related films ever made.

 

The Karate Kid ( 2010 )

7/10

Not as good as the original, slightly diluted story line and not enough training footage as it were, mainly montages. Less cheesy than the original though ( such is the way with updates of classics ), and worth seeing all the same.

 

I agree. The only thing that really bugged me about it was the end where he does the snake trick thing to the other kid? What is up with that? So lame. Otherwise a nice update to the original and Jackie Chan in a serious role, which is a nice change.

 

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance   8/10

People are animals. Everyone dies.
Magnificent camerawork, brilliant ending (and credits).

 

After Earth - 5/10

I didn't expect much, and there wasn't much there, so expectations were met.

There is something really weird about any movie in which Will Smith had more of a role than just acting. Will Smith has been pushing his son (Jaden) into acting (not that his son is particularly bad) and I think leveraging his own wealth and Hollywood clout to make it happen.

The result are characters played by Will Smith that seem strangely autobiographical. Will Smith got divorced years ago, got custody of his son (Trey), and even wrote a song about it.

And even though Smith remarried and had more children, in 2005 he started producing the movies he starred in, and the characters he played all became fairly unlikable, defeated, and/or fighting inner demons.

So there's a resulting weirdness in the roles both Will and Jaden play where I can never suspend my disbelief completely because they just seem too close to my perceived reality of his life.

Take Pursuit of Happyness (2006) for instance. Here is a movie with Will Smith playing a father working as hard as he can to make a better life for himself and his son (played by Jaden).

And then there's the remake of Karate Kid. Although Will doesn't play a part in the movie, we see Jaden Smith, who was 11 at the time of shooting, with a six pack and who is both extremely strong and flexible for his age. It's very impressive, but you also get this weird sense of stress and exhaustion that isn't coming from Jaden's acting, like Jaden himself has just been pushed too hard.

After Earth is the same, if not more autobiographical and strange than the previous movies with Jaden and Will Smith. Will plays a father who is distant from his son and has (perhaps) overly high expectations. Jaden plays Will's son, who has worked hard his entire life to live up to the expectations of his father hoping to gain his love someday.

Am I the only one who feels this way? I honestly could be completely wrong. It's not like I actually have any knowledge on the subject, so I'm not saying that this is the truth or anything. I am just trying to say that, as a result of this perception, my enjoyment or interpretation of these movies are altered.

 

Well put! Great film!

 

I just watched this at the weekend as well. The action was great, but the story line seemed to drag on a lot and I was left pretty bored by the end. I don't know if it was just how tired I was whilst watching, or if it actually lacked the finesse of the first two films, but I give it a 6/10 as well. There were definitely a few glaring plot omissions/ridiculous assumptions that I picked up on, the most obvious being

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how is it that suddenly anyone (namely Pepper's tiny frame or the President) can wear an Iron Man suit despite it being a metal suit molded and in his own words "coded" for Tony Stark?

Star Trek: Into Darkness: 8/10

I don't know what all the fuss was about as far as this being the worst Star Trek movie of all time. Granted, I'm not a massive Trekkie and I haven't watched the "everything wrong with ST:ID in x seconds or less" video on YouTube yet, but my own impression is that it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. As a modern Star Trek movie involving a classic villain and the Klingon race it may not have lived up to the expectations of Trek fanatics, but I thought it was another good addition to the franchise, all but the still ridiculous amount of Lens Flare. Someone should take that big flashlight they used for those scenes and whack JJ in the nuts with it. Maybe that'd get through to him?

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Also, "It's not Khan, it's just not"

Except Clicky... it totally was. What was that all about? People knew good and well that it was Khan a year before the release and the actors still had to blatantly lie about it?

 

Rush - 9/10

A bit fast-forwarded in parts (for those of us who know the history better than we'd ever publicly admit) but it was a fantastic movie that stood tall on its own merit, not just as a film geared toward petrolheads.

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