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Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

Captain America: Civil War

8/10

Excellent movie.

Point deductions:

-1 point for Hawkeye appearing in this movie.
-1 point for Hawkeye not being bloodily dismembered in this movie.



Favourite moment:

Bucky: "Could you move your seat forward?"
Falcon: "No."



About the plot:

I was going to complain about the weakness of the villain, but that was kinda the point of the story: some cunning 'normal' manages to bring the Avengers closer to destruction than the powerful bad guys from previous movies had managed.

 
I finally got to watch this:

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

8/10 for the story
9/10 for the action

6/10 for the action being waaaaaaaaay too long.

It was exhausting to watch.

I actually had to stop in the middle and go get dinner the battles were taking so long.

In the movie's defense, I was watching the Extended Version so perhaps the movie version cut these battles shorter.

So while the plotlines were surprisingly emotional, but is it just me that this movie

is a real downer?

Poor Thorin could have spent his life, peacefully looking for his father, instead Gandalf talks him into a suicide mission. Stubborn as dwarves are, Gandalf knew as soon as he got Thorin invested, he would stick to it to the end no matter what.

Thorin ends his life gaining back the kingdom under the mountain and killing his grandfather's killer, but he never gets to enjoy any of that. The gold in his kingdom is poisoned and poisons his mind, his entire line is exterminated - Thorin, Kili, Fili - all dead and his cousin gains the kingdom. I assume this is because of a weakness in Thorin's line? None of their blood can withstand the gold's poison so it's better if they're all dead?

Bummer. What a futile quest for them.

No one feels the battle was worth it, except maybe, on a subconscious level, the wizards. The place is safe from Orcs and the evil that is coming.

Thrandil - who is a BAD ASS - doesn't think the battle and jewels were worth the elf lives he's lost. Bard certainly doesn't. The fisherfolk of Lake Town barely survived Smaug and then they get hit by Orcs. Thorin's cousin Ironfoot loses nearly his entire army.

Radagast finally shows up to help, but he just brings some eagles and one man-bear. That's it. Gandalf is never able to use his wizard powers because he can't jimmy Radagast's wizard staff to work, so he's just one old man fighting.

Tauriel and Legolas' story goes nowhere. Legolas rides off into the future and no one knows what happens to Tauriel since she was banished from Mirkwood.

They always show hundreds surviving these battles, but really it should be maybe 15 people of each good guy army - at most!

So it's puzzling that

Bilbo looks back on his adventure with such fondness.


Bilbo never did anything to impress Lord Elrond, so why would Bilbo get invited to stay with the Rivendell Elves when it was the Mirkwood Elves he fought alongside?

When Bilbo is reminiscing he says "I meant to go back… wander the paths of Mirkwood… visit Laketown… see the Lonely Mountain again..."

Why would he want to see the Lonely Mountain and the local environs again when Erebor and Laketown is full of the memories of his failures and loss and so much death, and Mirkwood when it's full of danger and spiders?

And did he walk all the way back to the Shire? It would have taken him years. At least Frodo and his buddies got horses to ride!




Seems to me Peter kinda forgot about Bilbo's fond memories and inspirational stories he told to Frodo when he made this movie. Bilbo ought to be traumatized and suffering PTSD not telling adventure stories to his nephew.

BTW, I haven't read the book so I don't know how closely Peter Jackson sticks to the story.
 
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IIRC, the entire third movie took up just a few paragraphs in the actual book, so the events of it didn't factor much into anything that happened before Jackson made it.

What bugged me was the way the final Smaug scene was put into the third movie instead of being the finale of the second one and how all the wizards and elves totally forgot about running into Sauron and his minions by the time the Lord of the Rings story came around.
 
Bulworth

Warren Beatty stars as an out of touch Senator who has an epiphany after spending a weekend in the 'hood, and starts rapping in his campaign appearances.

It also features Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, Christine Baransky, Oliver Platt, and some news media cameos like Larry King.


Man...this movie has not aged well. I mean it was a mess to begin with. Satire is supposed to be at least a little funny, right? This is not. It also tries to be a slapstick comedy at times, and fails. The serious political commentary hits at low-hanging fruit, the movie doesn't exactly explode stereotypes to put it mildly.

3/10
 
Premium Rush

7.5/10

A good action thriller with an interesting set of protagonists--New York City bike express couriers--and the classic B-movie virtues (although a somewhat bigger budget than a B-movie, even today). The pace is tight, the action is solid, and the performances, if not award-winning, are convincing. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dania Ramirez and Michael Shannon headline the cast.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
IIRC, the entire third movie took up just a few paragraphs in the actual book, so the events of it didn't factor much into anything that happened before Jackson made it.

What bugged me was the way the final Smaug scene was put into the third movie instead of being the finale of the second one and how all the wizards and elves totally forgot about running into Sauron and his minions by the time the Lord of the Rings story came around.
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That was typical though.

Remember the opening of LOTR? The monologue by Galadriel describing a creeping menace and the "ring passing out of all knowledge" becoming legend?

Strange then that so many people know about the ring if it supposedly passed out of memory and things that should not have been were forgotten but not.

So, I imagine Middle Earth is like that. Things they say they forget they don't, and things they shouldn't have forgotten, they do.
 
Just finished Ex Machina

I'd give it a 8.5/10. It was nice to see something that is more classically science fiction, instead of just genre movies 'in space'. It is an obvious exploration of what it means to be human through interactions between humans and an artificial intelligence, but it does so in a quiet, contemplative manner that is refreshing after action-heavy movies like "I, Robot". Visuals and scenery are great and the actors are true to their characters.
 
The Witch 8/10

The Witch is an evil movie. I felt truly uncomfortable watching some scenes. Hopeless and dark.

Goats horrify me now. Children have always horrified me, but now even more so.

Incredible movie. It left me speechless.
 
Midnight in Paris

8/10

Probably Woody Allen's best film of the past decade or so, maybe his best since Radio Days. It has a very good script (Allen was Oscar-nominated) and a strong cast. Owen Wilson is very effective, playing a variation on the "Woody Allen nebbish" role, while Rachel McAdams and Marion Cotillard are good leading ladies and Corey Stoll is an appropriately masculine and extroverted Ernest Hemingway.
 
Beautiful Creatures

7.5/10

This darkly comic crime film (Scottish style) would be considered a buddy movie if it had two male leads; as it stars Susan Lynch and a platinum blonde Rachel Weisz, I like to think of it as a "bff movie." The story of two Glasgow women who try to free themselves from lives filled with abusive men (and abscond with a million quid or so of a mobster's money) is not perfect, but it has some deliciously comic moments and Lynch and Weisz have terrific gal-pal chemistry.
 
Wolfpack (?/10)

This is a documentary. A family of 7 teens have been kept isolated in a New York apartment their entire lives. And this is the story of them starting to contact the outside world. The reason for their isolation is that the parents were Hare Krishna and had turned their back on the world. I do wonder if the dad wasn't a narcissist as well. I thought I got a vibe of that. But he seemed genuinely remorseful, so I'm not sure. Anyhoo... interesting, I have no idea how to rate it. The film is too weird. It's also light on explanation. They explain very little details. It's all focus on how they're feeling at this or that moment.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2415458/
 
The Falling Man

This is a documentary about one of the people who jumped from one of the buildings on 9/11. It's basis is that of a photograph/series of photographs of one of the jumpers and the search for his identity.

It's interesting in that it shows how differently people cope with the same thing. When the photo was published along with all the other scenes of what occurred that day, the picture of this one falling man sparked outrage in some, who saw the publishing of the photo as kind of exploitive voyeurism intruding on a person's last horrifying moments who chose to die one way in order to prevent dying in another way they concluded would be even worse. In others it came to symbolize the event as an image of human suffering. Neither point of view is wrong, and each side has very good reasons for why the image makes them feel the way they do.

But the question is whether this is worth watching.

I don't think it was for me because I hadn't forgotten the jumpers and I remember trying to put myself in their shoes and imagining what that must have been like. And the only conclusion I could come to was that it was obviously horrible, and that I hope I am never faced with such a choice. And I think that everyone dealt with those images and the events of that day in their own way. IOW, it's a film that didn't need to be made--not because it's obnoxious or distasteful, but because it simply doesn't add much to the story that we don't already know or haven't thought about.

Still, it is touching and some may find value in it for that reason.

5/10
 
Colonel Sanders said:
The Falling Man

This is a documentary about one of the people who jumped from one of the buildings on 9/11. It's basis is that of a photograph/series of photographs of one of the jumpers and the search for his identity.

It's interesting in that it shows how differently people cope with the same thing. When the photo was published along with all the other scenes of what occurred that day, the picture of this one falling man sparked outrage in some, who saw the publishing of the photo as kind of exploitive voyeurism intruding on a person's last horrifying moments who chose to die one way in order to prevent dying in another way they concluded would be even worse. In others it came to symbolize the event as an image of human suffering. Neither point of view is wrong, and each side has very good reasons for why the image makes them feel the way they do.

But the question is whether this is worth watching.

I don't think it was for me because I hadn't forgotten the jumpers and I remember trying to put myself in their shoes and imagining what that must have been like. And the only conclusion I could come to was that it was obviously horrible, and that I hope I am never faced with such a choice. And I think that everyone dealt with those images and the events of that day in their own way. IOW, it's a film that didn't need to be made--not because it's obnoxious or distasteful, but because it simply doesn't add much to the story that we don't already know or haven't thought about.

Still, it is touching and some may find value in it for that reason.

5/10
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I've read some on this subject.

Did they discuss in the movie the reactions of the families?

I remember reading, when they were trying to track down who the 'falling man' actually was, some families denying vehemently that he could be their son, because only 'trash' would kill themselves.

Yes, these grieving families denigrated the "jumpers" because they were committing suicide which was anathema to these people's belief systems.

Other families, where suicide also carried a negative connotation in their lives, were angry that history had decided to call these poor souls 'jumpers' as if their jumping was an act of will and not a desperate act forced upon them.
 
credoconsolans said:
Colonel Sanders said:
The Falling Man

This is a documentary about one of the people who jumped from one of the buildings on 9/11. It's basis is that of a photograph/series of photographs of one of the jumpers and the search for his identity.

It's interesting in that it shows how differently people cope with the same thing. When the photo was published along with all the other scenes of what occurred that day, the picture of this one falling man sparked outrage in some, who saw the publishing of the photo as kind of exploitive voyeurism intruding on a person's last horrifying moments who chose to die one way in order to prevent dying in another way they concluded would be even worse. In others it came to symbolize the event as an image of human suffering. Neither point of view is wrong, and each side has very good reasons for why the image makes them feel the way they do.

But the question is whether this is worth watching.

I don't think it was for me because I hadn't forgotten the jumpers and I remember trying to put myself in their shoes and imagining what that must have been like. And the only conclusion I could come to was that it was obviously horrible, and that I hope I am never faced with such a choice. And I think that everyone dealt with those images and the events of that day in their own way. IOW, it's a film that didn't need to be made--not because it's obnoxious or distasteful, but because it simply doesn't add much to the story that we don't already know or haven't thought about.

Still, it is touching and some may find value in it for that reason.

5/10
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I've read some on this subject.

Did they discuss in the movie the reactions of the families?

I remember reading, when they were trying to track down who the 'falling man' actually was, some families denying vehemently that he could be their son, because only 'trash' would kill themselves.

Yes, these grieving families denigrated the "jumpers" because they were committing suicide which was anathema to these people's belief systems.

Other families, where suicide also carried a negative connotation in their lives, were angry that history had decided to call these poor souls 'jumpers' as if their jumping was an act of will and not a desperate act forced upon them.
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The first family the film covered were Catholic. They were wrought with grief at the possibility this could have been their dad/husband because Catholicism dictates a nonstop, one-way ticket to Hell for suicide. It turned out not to be him and they were greatly relieved. Basic reasoning, and their goddamn church should have told them that this wasn't really a suicide, but instead a choice of the manner in which their death would occur. To stay in the building meant certain death and horrible pain for an indeterminate amount of time, while jumping meant certain death in about 10 seconds. And, as the world witnessed, God's hand did not reach down and scoop up his favorites, so jumping ended their agony earlier.

The second family, and the one to which the man most likely belonged to were Southern Baptists and they handled it quite differently. The father of the man in the picture(s) was a preacher and it was apparent that this had put him into a crisis of faith, but the film really shied away from telling that story. I tend to think the film made the right choice in doing so because the film's mission was not to point out the tremendous indifference that gods display towards their followers every single day, but instead to locate the identity of this one person and then tell that story. It also wouldn't have done the atheist cause any favors. There's honesty and then there's being a complete asshole about something.

Where was God then? is a question that one has face and deal with on their own.
 
Guns, Girls and Gambling

7/10

This low-budget, direct-to-video caper film is more entertaining than I would have expected, with an above-average script and twisty plot. Christian Slater is an effective everyman protagonist caught up in a complex criminal scheme revolving around the theft of an ancient Apache war mask, trying to stay alive while caught between cowboys and Indians, ranchers and their daughters, crooked sheriffs, and a mysterious and deadly blonde (Helena Mattson) with a penchant for quoting Edgar Allan Poe. Powers Boothe, Jeff Fahey and Gary Oldman show up in supporting roles.

Trivia note: Janet Jones (aka Wayne Gretzky's wife) is one of the producers, and their daughter Paulina has a cameo.
 
The Revenant

Spoilers below, but not for the ending.

It's a beautifully filmed move about a tracker in the frozen old West (Northern?) of the U.S. who's half-white half-Indian son is killed by a philosophical villain after the main character is severely mauled by a bear. Survival and revenge ensues.

The visuals of the movie are incredible. Everything from the landscapes to the fighting between fur trappers and Indians to the wildlife are wonderful to look at. And the portrayal of the kind of life the people led just to survive makes one truly appreciate their struggles.

The first problem with this movie though, is that the tracker, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio is superhuman. All you have to know is that antibiotics didn't exist back then to understand he would have died from the bear mauling pretty quickly. Also, exposure to the weather would have killed anyone in perfect physical health let alone a person who's emaciated, unable to walk, deeply gouged by bear claws all over his body and neck, and drained of an alarming portion of his blood. DiCaprio's character would have died either from massive infection and blood loss, or have been frozen solid before the infection killed him, or would have died after spending so much time in a river with nearly freezing water, or would have died from the great fall off a cliff and into a tree before being frozen. Further, the scene with the bear shows the bear ripping out what looked to be an achilles tendon, or at least a meaty portion of a calf, but in a matter of days he can walk again. It's just not believable.

One escape scene is particularly bad for several reasons, among which include him getting ahold of a one shot pistol that he somehow manages to fire three shots from without reloading.

If you're gonna go realistic, then stay realistic. The escape scene above seemed to have been written the way it was simply for the sake of showing the scene where he rides a horse off a cliff.

So if you want to see a movie that's beautifully filmed, see this movie. But know that you're going to consistently be taken out of the film by the fact that no human being in the world could have survived what DiCaprio's character did in this.

10/10 for the visuals
2/10 for the unbelievable survival theme
 
Colonel Sanders said:
The first problem with this movie though, is that the tracker, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio is superhuman. All you have to know is that antibiotics didn't exist back then to understand he would have died from the bear mauling pretty quickly. Also, exposure to the weather would have killed anyone in perfect physical health let alone a person who's emaciated, unable to walk, deeply gouged by bear claws all over his body and neck, and drained of an alarming portion of his blood. DiCaprio's character would have died either from massive infection and blood loss, or have been frozen solid before the infection killed him, or would have died after spending so much time in a river with nearly freezing water, or would have died from the great fall off a cliff and into a tree before being frozen. Further, the scene with the bear shows the biting out what looked to be his achilles tendon out of one of his legs, but in a matter of days he can walk again. It's just not believable.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass
 
When he went off the cliff, that was it for me. I just wanted him to die and get it over with already.

But, no, he was Wile E. Coyote.

Something else that bothered me was how the Tom Hardy character could just loudly advocate leaving the injured behind. Who would even walk in the park with such a person. Couldn't believe it.
 
X-Men: Apocalypse.

Nicely done movie. High point is the Quicksilver rescue, which is something of a spoiler but not much of one. Timeline of the series no longer works as a whole though.
 
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