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

Star Wars (Again!)

So after waiting for the hype to die down a bit (I hate crowded cinema's), the SO and I decided to take a trip out.
Wife had educated herself by seeing the OT the three nights previous after never seeing them before.

Spoiler

All in all, a good film with a lot of inconsistencies. It relies a lot on the hardcore fans having a lot of background knowledge of the interim period between RoTJ and TFA. My wife and I just thought 'well, who the fudge are these first order clowns, and why do they have a prepubescent Ron Weasley as General?'

The whole plot seems a bit like a playground spat, but on a galactic scale and with more death...

So the First Order want to effectively be more evil than the Empire on purpose? The Empire wanted order and didn't care how they got it, TFO don't seem to care about anything other than killing Luke everyone and blowing up planets.

The film could've been a lot better if they fleshed out a few new characters rather than dwelling on the old ones. As fun to reminisce as it is, they all seem a little 'done' now. More background on Finn, Phasma, Rey etc would've made me like the characters a lot more.

I don't have time to write more than a short amount just now. I may flesh out my reasoning later.

7/10

 

Harbinger Down

6/10

For a fan movie, I'd have scored it higher, but seeing as it was supposed to be a low-ish budget, professional production, it didn't really live up to the hype. Interesting concept, let down by some ropey acting and dialogue, and practical effects that were no where near as good as I'd have hoped, considering it was basically 'The Thing' on a boat. I've seen worse- the big budget prequel to 'The thing' was a serious let down too, though not just for the bad decisions surrounding the practical effects vs CGI.

Meh.

 

Diablo - 3/10

It's really goddamn boring. It feels like everyone just phoned it in, for everything. And Scott, while looking scarily like Clint, needs a lot more seasoning acting wise.

Sicario - 7/10

Well. Some elements you see coming a mile off, but it was enjoyable enough.

 

The Hateful Eight - 8.5/10

Typical Tarantino, so if you're not a fan don't bother, I thought it was excellent and the time whizzed by. Good to see Kurt Russell getting his teeth into a gritty character part again.

I love the way that QT can make something as trivial as trying to keep a door shut into a source of ridiculous humour. Not as funny as the Klan masks in Django Unchained but close.

 

You r8 the h8 full 8, 8 m8? sounds gr8

 

Huh, completely unintentional coincidence!

 

Who am I 6/10 (Kein System ist sicher)

A German movie, I find it difficult to rate. A movie about hackers, which is always difficult to portray. The "Virtual Reality" visualisations are actually quite good, the actual depictions of what these guys do on screen is.....not*.

*as far as I can tell, I doubt having multiple windows of fast running figures is helping anyone achieve anything.

Robocop 6/10 (2014)
Not bad for a remake, the first hour or so was too slow for me though. The Gary Oldman part was great, the "Big Fights" at the end were...disappointing.
My wife actually liked it (which surprised me).
Don't think she's ever seen Paul Verhoevens version though, Hmmmm

 

Also saw the above.

4/10.

I'm a Tarantino fan but I found this incredibly dull. Walton Goggins was the absolute star of the show, but aside from that I found almost everything about the film to be lacklustre. By the end I was a bit annoyed that I'd just wasted 3 hours of my life.

 

That seems to be the problem with recent Tarantino films, they all seem too long and [often unnecessarily] drawn out ...

 

Not seen the film so I can't comment on his performance in that, but he was pretty great in Justified if you're looking for more of him

 

Fair enough, I'll go see Creed tomorrow then.

 

Nearly right It's his style.

 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (7/10) (2013...not 1947 version)

Missed this one initiallyAn interesting story combined with fantastically pretty pictures.
I somehow underestimate Ben Stiller.

 

Danny Kaye > Ben Stiller

 

Couldn't agree more.

Went as a family to see it for a second time the other day (So that's my third time seeing it at the cinema) and I swear the movie gets even better with repeated viewing.

The emotional scenes hit me harder on this viewing than they did on previous viewings

Spoiler

Han & Ben and the Rey & Ben showdown

and also found the issues I felt with it on the first viewing were diminished to the point of not being issues even when I tried to think of them.

Spoiler

On the first viewing I felt Leia's botoxed face was a bit too static, and the CGI Snoke was a but uncanny, even Mas wasn't quite right. By the third viewing I couldn't really see the problems I saw the first time around which really makes you appreciate the work the SFX teams put in. They must have seen these shots thousands of times during production, spotting those little bits that pull you out of the scene must have been impossible.

It's a shame in a way that the final battle came down to a death star trench run, but it wasn't a central focus of the movie or any characters personal arc so I appreciate they made the right choice. If they had gone with something 'new' then they would have had to make that a focus - which would have taken away from the REAL story that was Ben & his (in his mind) flakey smuggler of a father, and Rey opening herself up to the force.

Oh man, I got the feels just thinking about those scenes again.

In summary, I'm looking forward to there being more Star Wars movies made. I want to see more of Rey, Finm etc.

 

Please share what you think some of the main plot holes are, using spoiler tags, obvs.

Regarding your issue of '

Spoiler

like how the main bad guys are f'ing 12 year old pussies': a) they're not 12, but I think you were deliberately exaggerating this point, so b) How old are most suicide bombers and the like? They're young and impressionable, like the baddies in TFA. Whether this was a deliberate creative decision to reflect modern terrorism in the First Order, I've no idea, but they've quite clearly chosen to have the head bad guy be someone who recruits young, impressionable people to do his will - isn't that pretty reasonable actually? And rising up out of the ashes of the Empire, who else would they recruit instead?

 

Spoiler

I'd say Ren is at the perfect age. Angry, confused and a demonstrably a manipulated little sh!t.

Hux is the only character who I felt was just way too young, and while I can't blame the actor - I do think that character was the one I found the most difficult to connect with.

And when that character is fully human and he's up against fully CGI creations, ball shaped puppets and aged old dudes wearing yak herd's worth of yak hair, that is saying something.

BTW, when is the right time for us to ditch the

Spoiler

spoiler tags

when talking about TFA?

 

When everyone knows that

Spoiler

Han

dies?

 

Once everyone has learnt that

Spoiler

Luke quits, after 20 years on the force, to chase his dream as a gogo dancer in Mos Eisley

.