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

Cobra (1986)

A rating on plausibility of premise would be zero. After that it was a hell of a fun ride.

Some of the car stunts were insane and funny at the same time. I thought the camera work was excellent at times.

I give it an 8/10.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Logan

...

Overall, the film is good, but certain flaws nagged at me.

Spoilers

The big flaw was The Memento Flaw. IE, waiting too damn long to explain something. In this film, the mutants are mostly gone and Logan isn't doing well. This doesn't seem to be addressed until near the very end. Almost nothing is mentioned about this. No hints at all, that I recall. The explanation then leads to questions of competency of the mutants not seeing this coming and dealing with it. The reveal felt like the anti-climatic reveal of Snape as the Half Blood Prince in the movie.

Poor Eric La Salle, also known as that asshole character from ER. Hey, let's stay over for the night! :eek: Are you fucking kidding me?! You know the people found you quickly the first time!

The death of Xavier. So fake psychopath Wolverine just stands there for how long?! That is a massive narrative cheat. Also Xavier's death seemed to occur almost needlessly and as a convenience to the plot... it'd be harder for Xavier and Logan to be fighting one last time together running in the woods. It'd been better to how figured out how Xavier could have made it to the final battle which could have made the final battle scene a bit more designed than just chop chop. Additionally, much like the Star Wars icon's death in Star Wars VII felt contrived and pointless instead of incredible climatic, this death seemed cheap and confusing. (Why is Wolverine's hair different... oh must be a dream or something... aw shit, this is real.)

Finally, convenience.
  • The albino betrays betrays betrays and then does something about it.
  • In the wilderness, driving well off-road, but then the Reavers can amass a large wheeled force on a road within the last few miles of the border?!
  • They've got drones? Why not plant bombs? Blow them up, mission accomplished.
  • Why are they recapturing the kids? Aren't they trying to kill them?!

And most importantly, where in the fuck in North Dakota was Eden?! Desert, tall rock cliffs?! Along the Canadian border? And the spot on the map for Eden, wasn't 7 miles from the Canadian Border, if I recall correctly. Oh, and why in the hell did it matter about the border in the first place? Even the evil military people were worried about the border. What, did Canada become a massive military force in the last 10 years?



2.5 to 3 of 4 (3 if someone can explain some of those things for me)
Click to expand...

Well, I can't explain most of it, and those do seem like valids points. However...

Logan being sick I figured from the start was due to adamantium poisoning. Maybe that's just because I know the comics, but in general, does it really matter why he's sick? Maybe he's just getting old and his powers are fading. The actual reason doesn't factor in to the plot in anyway. Unlike Xavier killing the X-men for example.

Speaking of which, if Xavier just one day had his first seizure and killed everyone, how could they have possibly seen that coming? I think that was a nice touch. I didn't actually think about that possibility before Xavier blurted it out, I figured they had just went into hiding like Logan and Caliban or died somewhere else. Or maybe that Logan killed them like in the comics. Didn't bother me one bit.

 
Yesterday I watched Dark Star. John Carpenter's 1974 weird space "comedy" about a crew on a long mission to destroy unstable planets across the galaxy. The movie has been a "cult classic" since the 70s, but I never got around to watching it before.

I think I should have left it on the shelf. It has a charm that can only be had with low budget 70s science fiction (the alien is a beach ball...seriously) but the kitsch factor doesn't overcome the fact that this is a really bad movie. IMDB lists the budget as $60,000, and I'm guessing a not insignificant portion of that was spent on weed.

The only positive thing is that I finally learned where Bomb #20 got his username. Well played, sir.
 
Last night watched Robot Jox. Saw it long ago in the days of video tape, and the one thing really remembered about it was the white stuntman standing in for a black woman. On DVD it was nice and clear.. the stunt man needed a shave. Overall, it was not that bad of a movie. Cheesy special effects and stop-motion giant robots aside, not bad for mindless fun.
 
Jayjay said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Logan

...

Overall, the film is good, but certain flaws nagged at me.

Spoilers

The big flaw was The Memento Flaw. IE, waiting too damn long to explain something. In this film, the mutants are mostly gone and Logan isn't doing well. This doesn't seem to be addressed until near the very end. Almost nothing is mentioned about this. No hints at all, that I recall. The explanation then leads to questions of competency of the mutants not seeing this coming and dealing with it. The reveal felt like the anti-climatic reveal of Snape as the Half Blood Prince in the movie.

Poor Eric La Salle, also known as that asshole character from ER. Hey, let's stay over for the night! :eek: Are you fucking kidding me?! You know the people found you quickly the first time!

The death of Xavier. So fake psychopath Wolverine just stands there for how long?! That is a massive narrative cheat. Also Xavier's death seemed to occur almost needlessly and as a convenience to the plot... it'd be harder for Xavier and Logan to be fighting one last time together running in the woods. It'd been better to how figured out how Xavier could have made it to the final battle which could have made the final battle scene a bit more designed than just chop chop. Additionally, much like the Star Wars icon's death in Star Wars VII felt contrived and pointless instead of incredible climatic, this death seemed cheap and confusing. (Why is Wolverine's hair different... oh must be a dream or something... aw shit, this is real.)

Finally, convenience.
  • The albino betrays betrays betrays and then does something about it.
  • In the wilderness, driving well off-road, but then the Reavers can amass a large wheeled force on a road within the last few miles of the border?!
  • They've got drones? Why not plant bombs? Blow them up, mission accomplished.
  • Why are they recapturing the kids? Aren't they trying to kill them?!

And most importantly, where in the fuck in North Dakota was Eden?! Desert, tall rock cliffs?! Along the Canadian border? And the spot on the map for Eden, wasn't 7 miles from the Canadian Border, if I recall correctly. Oh, and why in the hell did it matter about the border in the first place? Even the evil military people were worried about the border. What, did Canada become a massive military force in the last 10 years?



2.5 to 3 of 4 (3 if someone can explain some of those things for me)
Click to expand...

Well, I can't explain most of it, and those do seem like valids points. However...

Logan being sick I figured from the start was due to adamantium poisoning. Maybe that's just because I know the comics, but in general, does it really matter why he's sick? Maybe he's just getting old and his powers are fading. The actual reason doesn't factor in to the plot in anyway. Unlike Xavier killing the X-men for example.

Speaking of which, if Xavier just one day had his first seizure and killed everyone, how could they have possibly seen that coming? I think that was a nice touch. I didn't actually think about that possibility before Xavier blurted it out, I figured they had just went into hiding like Logan and Caliban or died somewhere else. Or maybe that Logan killed them like in the comics. Didn't bother me one bit.

Click to expand...
Well...

For Logan's health, I had no idea. I figured it was likely whatever dealt the other mutants their death. The movie certainly implied they were gone, period. When Logan is at the clinic, that is made perfectly clear. They aren't hiding, they are dead.

Why does it matter? It matters a lot. The mutants are almost all dead, there was a genocide. The only remainders are the new rebooted breed.

 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Jayjay said:
Well, I can't explain most of it, and those do seem like valids points. However...

Logan being sick I figured from the start was due to adamantium poisoning. Maybe that's just because I know the comics, but in general, does it really matter why he's sick? Maybe he's just getting old and his powers are fading. The actual reason doesn't factor in to the plot in anyway. Unlike Xavier killing the X-men for example.

Speaking of which, if Xavier just one day had his first seizure and killed everyone, how could they have possibly seen that coming? I think that was a nice touch. I didn't actually think about that possibility before Xavier blurted it out, I figured they had just went into hiding like Logan and Caliban or died somewhere else. Or maybe that Logan killed them like in the comics. Didn't bother me one bit.

Click to expand...
Well...

For Logan's health, I had no idea. I figured it was likely whatever dealt the other mutants their death. The movie certainly implied they were gone, period. When Logan is at the clinic, that is made perfectly clear. They aren't hiding, they are dead.

Why does it matter? It matters a lot. The mutants are almost all dead, there was a genocide. The only remainders are the new rebooted breed.

Click to expand...

Not quite.

First, Jayjay was right about Logan, but missed one part.


Logan is getting old, which means his healing power doesn't work as well, which means the adamantium poisoning is actually affecting him. It wasn't an issue before because his healing power healed the damage as fast as the adamantium could cause it.

In the comics, it is well-established that his healing power doesn't work as well because part of it is devoted to dealing with the adamantium. When Magneto tore the adamantium out of Logan's body, his powers worked better.



As for the other mutants


Transigen put stuff in the food supply that prevented the birth of new mutants. The mutants at the X-Men mansion were killed by Xavier's accident, the others presumably died by other means, but in the main this was accomplished by preventing new births.

 
Underseer said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
Well...

For Logan's health, I had no idea. I figured it was likely whatever dealt the other mutants their death. The movie certainly implied they were gone, period. When Logan is at the clinic, that is made perfectly clear. They aren't hiding, they are dead.

Why does it matter? It matters a lot. The mutants are almost all dead, there was a genocide. The only remainders are the new rebooted breed.

Click to expand...

Not quite.

First, Jayjay was right about Logan, but missed one part.


Logan is getting old, which means his healing power doesn't work as well, which means the adamantium poisoning is actually affecting him. It wasn't an issue before because his healing power healed the damage as fast as the adamantium could cause it.

In the comics, it is well-established that his healing power doesn't work as well because part of it is devoted to dealing with the adamantium. When Magneto tore the adamantium out of Logan's body, his powers worked better.

Click to expand...
But...

Is this actually ever mentioned in the movie?


As for the other mutants


Transigen put stuff in the food supply that prevented the birth of new mutants. The mutants at the X-Men mansion were killed by Xavier's accident, the others presumably died by other means, but in the main this was accomplished by preventing new births.

Click to expand...
However,

I thought Transigen put stuff in the food that made mutants sick, not merely unable to reproduce because they targeted the "mutant gene". To me, the poison was what was hurting Logan and made him unable to deal with the healing in general and his endo-metal skeleton. The sickness from the poison would affect all mutants, globally. Xavier's accident only affected those at the school, so a good deal of mutants, but weren't there millions, tens of millions of mutants around the globe?

 
okay seriously the movie has been out for like... several months, and we're discussing relatively minor screenplay details that aren't directly plot-story related, so i'm not bothering with all the hide tags.
if you're really excited to see logan but haven't seen it yet don't read below this.

1. it's stated in the first 5-10 minutes of the film (during a radio broadcast) that several mutants died during the "westchester incident" - i'm not sure if you missed that, or if you'd consider that to be too obscure, but between that and xavier's half-remembered freakout and accusations towards logan of "what did you do?" to the x-men, it was definitely there that "something big happened and the x-men are gone", though definitely the reveal of what it is was delayed for dramatic purposes.

2. it's never explicitly stated in the movie that it's adamantium poisoning, but early in the film caliban says "you're sick, i can smell it" and logan sneers back "i know" and later in the film the doctor says "you need to check into a hospital to get tests done to find out what's poisoning you" logan replies "i know what it is" - given his attitude on the subject and the context of the previous films i thought someone who wasn't familiar with the comics and the history of his health issues relating to the adamantium would be able to put that together, but of course it could be not as obvious to someone without prior knowledge and i just didn't realize it.

3. it's never stated in the film that all the mutants in the world are dead, nor in hiding - simply that an incident some years before killed off most (or all) of the x-men, and that mutants are no longer considered an ongoing social problem.
it's stated (by the black farmer and by a few little show-don't-tell moments in the film) that transigen corn and corn syrup are in basically everything, and then later it's stated by the evil doctor guy that they had slipped 'gene therapy' into their products in order to prevent the natural birth of mutants.

4. per the comics there has never been a strictly defined number of mutants, though several round-about sources generally indicate that at its peak the mutant population of earth was around 30 million. but, that's the comics... who knows with the movies.

to your nit picks:
1. x-24 is shown several times to just stand there staring at something going on - if someone starts talking or a thing is happening he just kinda stands there and takes it in, this happens several times during the movie. so it didn't seem to me to be just a plot convenience he stood there and let xavier ramble.

2. caliban is tortured and beaten into submission to track logan and xavier, and still delays following their trail in order to give them a head start. it's not exactly "betrayal" to be kind of weak willed in the face of death and capitulate to demands, that's basically human nature.
when he does something about it, it's because the reavers leave some grenades within arm's reach of him - he didn't have an opportunity to martyr himself before that.

3. your points about the inconsistent behavior of transigen with regards to the kids are all irrefutable, that was just "stupid behavior by movie villains so that the plot can keep happening" unfortunately.
 
prideandfall said:
okay seriously the movie has been out for like... several months, and we're discussing relatively minor screenplay details that aren't directly plot-story related, so i'm not bothering with all the hide tags.
if you're really excited to see logan but haven't seen it yet don't read below this.

1. it's never explicitly stated in the movie that it's adamantium poisoning, but early in the film caliban says "you're sick, i can smell it" and logan sneers back "i know" and later in the film the doctor says "you need to check into a hospital to get tests done to find out what's poisoning you" logan replies "i know what it is" - given his attitude on the subject and the context of the previous films i thought someone who wasn't familiar with the comics and the history of his health issues relating to the adamantium would be able to put that together, but of course it could be not as obvious to someone without prior knowledge and i just didn't realize it.
Click to expand...
And this is the least problematic issue. He is sick from whatever, its affect is known, I can move on from there. Its the other mutants.

2. it's never stated in the film that all the mutants in the world are dead, nor in hiding...
Click to expand...
Doc at the clinic says otherwise. There are very few around anymore. Said he had always hoped to see one.
...simply that an incident some years before killed off most (or all) of the x-men, and that mutants are no longer considered an ongoing social problem.
Click to expand...
The above scene seems to indicate more broadly mutants.
3. per the comics there has never been a strictly defined number of mutants, though several round-about sources generally indicate that at its peak the mutant population of earth was around 30 million. but, that's the comics... who knows with the movies.
Click to expand...
In X-Men, they do the Cerybro thing and the red dots are mutants and there were a lot of red dots.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Doc at the clinic says otherwise. There are very few around anymore. Said he had always hoped to see one.
Click to expand...
i don't want to be an ass here because especially in movie discussion on the internet it's both easy and common to devolve into that sort of thing, so please keep in mind i'm aware of that and am actively trying to avoid it, however i need to address a simple fact that... no disrespect... you are basically wrong in your understanding of the film.
i mean i know film is subjective to an extent and you read into it what you want and i don't want to act like i know better than you, but you're expressing confusion or dislike of a context in the movie which just doesn't exist.

"i always hoped i'd get to meet someone like you. there's so few of you left" - how does that suggest they're all dead or in hiding, that a small town clinic doctor from rural BFE north dakota near the canadian border hasn't met a mutant before?
i mean yeah no new mutants have been born for at least a decade, the older ones are dying off, and the only real gathering place for mutants (the xavier institute) was shut down after an incident that killed most of the x-men.

The above scene seems to indicate more broadly mutants.
Click to expand...
i really don't think that it does. here's a refresher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JF_bTfT7hU
 
Pandorum (a public service)

It's about a space ship colony where two guys wake up after 8 years in hyper sleep and it becomes apparent quickly that things have gone awry. It's one of those awful movies that's made more awful by the fact that it's fairly intriguing at the start, but doesn't devolve in time for you to not consider it a wasted portion of your life. By the time I shut it off, I was 45 minutes or so in, feeling tricked by its cunning stupidity. Something on the order of picking up a bottle of beer you just sat down that someone slyly replaced with piss.

Fuck me/10
 
prideandfall said:
i don't want to be an ass here because especially in movie discussion on the internet it's both easy and common to devolve into that sort of thing, so please keep in mind i'm aware of that and am actively trying to avoid it, however i need to address a simple fact that... no disrespect... you are basically wrong in your understanding of the film.
Click to expand...
*gloves come off!!!*

"i always hoped i'd get to meet someone like you. there's so few of you left" - how does that suggest they're all dead or in hiding, that a small town clinic doctor from rural BFE north dakota near the canadian border hasn't met a mutant before?
Click to expand...
"so few of you left" to me indicates there are so few of them left, as in around, existing, alive. Clearly he isn't talking about mutants in his town, because it likely wasn't a bustling mutant hub in 'the good ole days'.

I'd say we just need to agree to disagree, but this is the Internet! And the one thing the Internet can't tolerate is pragmatic disagreeing. So do I need to start calling you names or will you start... dumbass. ;)
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
blastula said:
3.62/4

Did you see it at a Fathom screening too?
Click to expand...
Yup. First time to see Lemmon (my favorite actor) on the big screen.

Though Monroe had the best line, Look at the diamonds, they must worth their weight in gold.
Click to expand...

There were many good lines. Plays well on the big screen. I don't think I had ever seen it other than parts while flipping channels, but I would rank it among the top screwball comedies. Lot of great talent in the cast from top to bottom.
 
By the way:

Mystery Men 9/10

Ahead of its time, should be revisited in this time of comic book movie mania.
 
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