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

[Jimmy Higgins]

MI 5 - 8/10

This was a really fun movie with good action and an interesting plot. A lot has been made about Cruise doing his own stunts and not using a double or green screen or anything and it really is noticable (maybe because I was looking for it) and adds a lot to the film by having it there.

I haven't seen the film, but the plane scene in the previews, it just looked too real to be faked. Sure, he was duct taped to the plane and there was no way he'd fall off, but still... major props for such a stunt.

 

[Ford]

Avengers: Age of Ultron



Yeah, I'm a little behind on catching up with the Marvel movies.

It was interesting to watch it in a dollar theater on a Monday afternoon with half a dozen people in the audience.


It fell kinda flat. I'm sure it was thrilling to watch in a full house on opening night, but without a crowd to laugh/cheer/gasp?


It was just okay.

 

[DrZoidberg]

50 Shades of Grey 4/10

I thought I'd hate it. I didn't. It's a decent movie. The actors make up for the writers flaws, and the film is better written than the book. The scenography hints that the director doesn't take the film seriously at all. That makes it fun. I laughed out loud several times. If I laugh, I'm good.

But it's not about BDSM. Christian Grey is a pervert. But the film doesn't explore his inner workings at all. The protagonist is Anastasia Steel and she isn't into BDSM. Not even slightly. She's not even curious about it. She just puts up with all his perverted shit because she likes the other stuff. That's not BDSM. That's some sort of prostitution or trading of services. Which I'm fine with... no moral issue with.... but don't call it BDSM. That makes it uninteresting to analyse at any depth. So I won't.

Yes, it's stupid. It's fun. Will you learn anything about BDSM? No.

 

[Underseer]

Avengers: Age of Ultron



Yeah, I'm a little behind on catching up with the Marvel movies.

It was interesting to watch it in a dollar theater on a Monday afternoon with half a dozen people in the audience.


It fell kinda flat. I'm sure it was thrilling to watch in a full house on opening night, but without a crowd to laugh/cheer/gasp?


It was just okay.

I'm pretty sure I pontificated on this movie earlier. Basically, Marvel screwed up the villain again, and this is one villain they should not have screwed up.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm pretty sure I pontificated on this movie earlier. Basically, Marvel screwed up the villain again, and this is one villain they should not have screwed up.

Ya, they should have given him the Time Gem instead of the Mind Gem and then had him travel back in time to kill Tony Stark's mother before she could give birth to him. That could have made for a good movie.

 

[One]

Dark Places - 6/10

Stars Charlize Theron in an adaptation of the book by Gillian Flynn. The sole survivor of a brutal killing spree that took out her entire family, Theron must go back over the circumstances of that night to unite the tattered threads of her adult life. Decent film, but slightly predictable. I enjoyed Theron's performance. Not so much the religious aspects. Too pat of an explanation. My issue with the use of dark religious traditions in film is that they are often treated superficially without real depth or accurate information.

 

[DrZoidberg]

September Eleven 1683 8/10 or 1/10

I just love how epic movies are today most often crappy b-movies. As is this filmatization of the Siege of Vienna. It's good in the way Plan 9 from Outer Space is good, or Troll 2. It's just the dumbest shit script ever. It's been criticized for being racist, as it's good against evil. The Christians in this film can actually do miracles = fact.

The dialogue is painful to watch. It's like everybody is David Brent. "Hello, I'm this and such and such and I am in this scene because bla bla bla and you notice my scarred face, I got this because of bla bla bla". A child could do better. This is just so retarded. It just goes on and on in this fashion.

The CGI is terrible. It's basically Total War. I like those games. But this is graphics pulled straight out of a pretty standard computer game. For a computer game, it's so-so. For a movie it's of course epically embarrassing.

So yeah.... I loved it. So bad it's good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Eleven_1683

And the best news.... it's free on Youtube. This is not a movie you want to waste any money on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChdGe2YxVmA

 

[TSwizzle]

Exodus: Gods and Kings, 4/10: Stars Christian Bale as Moses and has Ben Kingsley as somebody else and an odd appearance from Ewen Bremner who I cannot imagine as anybody else other than Spud in Trainspotting. This is the story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt. The build up is pretty decent but half way through, the movie gets boring. And you probably know the ending anyway.

 

[MarkW]

Lay the Favorite

6/10

This film suffered from a lack of dramatic tension, probably because it was adapted from journalist Beth Raymer's memoir of her experiences in the world of legal and illegal sports gambling. While I haven't read the book, I kind of suspect that there simply wasn't enough of a coherent narrative in the source material to make a compelling movie. I enjoyed it to the degree I did because I am a fan of lead actress Rebecca Hall (who plays Beth, and who is onscreen for virtually the whole film); someone who isn't would probably rate this one lower than I did.

 

[Underseer]

I'm pretty sure I pontificated on this movie earlier. Basically, Marvel screwed up the villain again, and this is one villain they should not have screwed up.

Ya, they should have given him the Time Gem instead of the Mind Gem and then had him travel back in time to kill Tony Stark's mother before she could give birth to him. That could have made for a good movie.

No, they should have developed the villain.

Loki was developed in Thor, so the first Avengers movie did not have to waste time explaining to us his motivations and why we should empathize with him. They just had to reinforce what was already established in Thor.

They could have done the same thing with the second Avengers movie. They should have used Iron Man 3 to establish Ultron and explain what his motivations are and why we should feel sorry for him. There's plenty to empathize with, he was created with a directive (world peace) that was actually impossible, so he met the directive the only way he could: by eliminating the thing that keeps ending world peace, namely humanity. No matter what kind of person he would have been under other circumstances, he was doomed to become a genocidal maniac.

Avengers 2 just didn't have enough time to properly develop the villain because they had so many other plot points that had to be covered. Because establishing the villain was so rushed, we also got no emotional sense that Ultron betrayed his creator.

They could have explained and established all that crap in Iron Man 3, which would have left more room in Avengers 2 for all the other plot points they wanted to cover.

It's a shame they screwed up Ultron like that. What makes Ultron so terrifying is that his criticisms of humanity are perfectly valid: we really are a bunch of selfish, violent jerks. Add in the whole "doomed to become a genocidal maniac" thing, and he should have been a compelling villain. Instead, he was just another cookie cutter robot-gone-mad that we've seen countless times before in sci-fi movies.

 

[Jayjay]

Meh. By now I don't have any expectations for Marvel villains anyway, or that the movies would deviate far from the formula. What I liked about Age of Ultron was how much protagonist interaction Whedon managed to cram into a single movie... it's like he took a feature length plot for every member of the Avengers and condensed it all into two hours. On a per-minute basis, it's a lot more bang for the buck than any other Marvel movie so far, even if it isn't really all that different qualitatively speaking.

Secret to enjoyable movie experience: manage your expectations.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

It would be nice to have better villians in the Marvel movies. Other than Loki, they've really only been forgettable plot devices to drive forward the heroes' stories and not much in the way of characters in and of themselves.

 

[Ford]

It would be nice to have better villians in the Marvel movies. Other than Loki, they've really only been forgettable plot devices to drive forward the heroes' stories and not much in the way of characters in and of themselves.

Lately it seems as if the formula for a Marvel villain goes like this:

"Does he sound menacing? Let's go with that. Oh...he looks menacing too? Not totally necessary, but a nice touch. Done!"

 

[Jayjay]

It would be nice to have better villians in the Marvel movies. Other than Loki, they've really only been forgettable plot devices to drive forward the heroes' stories and not much in the way of characters in and of themselves.

Lately it seems as if the formula for a Marvel villain goes like this:

"Does he sound menacing? Let's go with that. Oh...he looks menacing too? Not totally necessary, but a nice touch. Done!"

I would add "does he have exactly the same powers as the protagonist?" to that list.

 

[One]

It's a shame they screwed up Ultron like that. What makes Ultron so terrifying is that his criticisms of humanity are perfectly valid: we really are a bunch of selfish, violent jerks. Add in the whole "doomed to become a genocidal maniac" thing, and he should have been a compelling villain. Instead, he was just another cookie cutter robot-gone-mad that we've seen countless times before in sci-fi movies.

I agree. This actually ruined it quite a bit for me. The movie was redeemed only by the moment when The Vision is carrying The Scarlet Witch in his arms - I loved their storyline, so that made me get all sentimental.

It would be nice to have better villians in the Marvel movies. Other than Loki, they've really only been forgettable plot devices to drive forward the heroes' stories and not much in the way of characters in and of themselves.

My favorite Marvel villain is Carnage, but they would have to make his storyline PG for a film - which totally defeats the purpose.
The other one is Dark Phoenix. They screwed up so bad I'm still not over it, although I was somewhat placated by the memory sequences in The Wolverine.
In order to like any of these films besides Thor, I have to pretend I haven't been reading comics since I was five. That way I don't get so ticked off and can just enjoy the movie.

 

[Ford]

Mad Max: Fury Road

(yeah, I'm spending a lot of time at the discount theater catching up on movies I missed)


I imagine the conversation went something like this:


"So what's the best part of the Mad Max movies?"

"A post apocalyptic landscape, with dramatic scenes setting the stage for heart stopping car chases!"


"So what if we took out that middle part?"


A two hour chase across the desert? Yep. Lots of explosions? Yep. Max almost gets killed in almost every scene? Yep. And it all works.


9/10

 

[Underseer]

I agree. This actually ruined it quite a bit for me. The movie was redeemed only by the moment when The Vision is carrying The Scarlet Witch in his arms - I loved their storyline, so that made me get all sentimental.

It would be nice to have better villians in the Marvel movies. Other than Loki, they've really only been forgettable plot devices to drive forward the heroes' stories and not much in the way of characters in and of themselves.

My favorite Marvel villain is Carnage, but they would have to make his storyline PG for a film - which totally defeats the purpose.
The other one is Dark Phoenix. They screwed up so bad I'm still not over it, although I was somewhat placated by the memory sequences in The Wolverine.
In order to like any of these films besides Thor, I have to pretend I haven't been reading comics since I was five. That way I don't get so ticked off and can just enjoy the movie.

Yeah, Vision carrying Wanda was great.

And you don't have to pretend you haven't read comic books since you were five. Marvel has a built-in mechanism for dealing with stuff like this as a result of trying to retcon decades of story: alternate dimensions. Any time they write themselves into a corner and have to retcon something, they can just say that something happened in an alternate dimension. The Marvel Ultimates line happens in another dimension, for example.

The comic book universe you know is designated Earth-616 (what I find amusing is that the dimensions are supposedly named by a comic book character [Reed Richards]). The cinematic universe is happening in Earth-199999. I'm not sure what dimension the 20th Century FOX movies take place in, but I'm sure it has a different number.

So movie Thor could actually meet comic book Thor in the pages of the comic books, and no doubt would be surprised to find out that the Thor of Earth-616 is now a woman. Ororo-616 could theoretically meet Ororo-199999 and wonder why she is so short and mousy. So you can easily compartmentalize the differences as the comic book universe already contains a built-in mechanism for such.

Anyway, if you're going to complain about FOX butchering X-Men stories, I think they butchered God Loves, Man Kills (X-Men 2) far worse than they butchered the Dark Phoenix Saga. The whole point to God Loves, Man Kills was to discuss the role religion plays in racist/genocidal movements (Evangelical protestant justifications for America's racial abuse of African-Americans, the Catholic church's role in every fascist regime in the 20th century, etc.), but the movie stripped out all religious references thus completely neutering the theme of the story.

It's sad that comic books in the 1980s were brave enough to ask the really tough questions, but Hollywood in the 2000s weren't.

 

[Jayjay]

It's sad that comic books in the 1980s were brave enough to ask the really tough questions, but Hollywood in the 2000s weren't.

Having grown up and thus imprinted with comics of 1980s, I'd say that was an interesting time when (mainstream) comics started exploring more adult themes and that produced some nice work like .. eh whatever. But there is no freaking way that mindset would translate to Hollywood movies and I don't think it necessarily has to. For example, this is your typical friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man from the 80s:

Yes, kids, join us in this "special adventure" and see a therapist about it for the next 10 years.

 

[MarkW]

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

7.5/10

Like most good films about con artists and their capers, this one is light and entertaining throughout. Michael Caine and Steve Martin play off each other very well as the rival grifters, while Glenne Headly was terrific in a breakthrough role as their intended mark.

 

[MarkW]

The Grand Budapest Hotel

9/10

Wes Anderson's comic, somewhat bittersweet period piece puts me just a little bit in mind of some of Hitchcock's 1930s films (such as The Lady Vanishes). A rather unrealistic story is told with an appropriately lightweight touch, while the film succeeds admirably in evoking the atmosphere of the fictitious Central European nation of Zubrowka (I suspect it's somewhere near Ruritania)--the film won Oscars for production design, costumes and makeup, along with one for Alexandre Desplat's score, laced with overtones of Dvorak. A terrific cast is headed by Ralph Fiennes (Golden Globe nominated), with newcomer Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan as the romantic leads and support from the likes of Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law and Edward Norton.