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

I'm not sure how to express how terrible this movie is.

You mentioned that it's an Adam Sandler movie. That does the job.

I have to imagine that this guy has a video of a movie studio CEO murdering a prostitute. His career over the several years doesn't make any sense otherwise.
 
I'm not sure how to express how terrible this movie is.

You mentioned that it's an Adam Sandler movie. That does the job.

I have to imagine that this guy has a video of a movie studio CEO murdering a prostitute. His career over the several years doesn't make any sense otherwise.

No, that's the thing - I went into this informed and with my eyes open. I was fully expecting a truly terrible Adam Sandler movie. What I saw was so, so much worse.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwi...rs-most-hilariously-scathing-reviews-20151211

Sandler and co-writer Tim Herlihy's script performs cultural mockery with all the incisive skill of a blind surgeon wielding a hammer.

:laughing-smiley-014
 
Red State

A combination David Koresh/Fred Phelps cult lures three horny highschoolers into a trailer, via a woman who's supposed to have sex with them. She drugs them and they take the kids to the church. Stuff happens and the ATF gets involved and for some reason, they're given the order to exterminate every single person in the compound because supposedly the ATF doesn't want a media fiasco.

The religious cult is portrayed as completely fucking over the top. They're not just fanatics, they're also cold blooded murderers.
The ATF isn't just a kind of bungling paramilitary outfit, they're small time genocidal Nazis who are all totally cool with murdering anyone they're told to and covering it up. The loose ends are many, the potholes enormous, and the bullshit thick.

Could have been interesting, but instead is so rife with ridiculousness and caricatures, that it's a sin foisted upon the eyes of the viewer by Satan himself.

3/10
 
I'm not sure how to express how terrible this movie is.

You mentioned that it's an Adam Sandler movie. That does the job.

I have to imagine that this guy has a video of a movie studio CEO murdering a prostitute. His career over the several years doesn't make any sense otherwise.
Actually, it does. $2.7 billion box office gross. Isn't there a thread in MD about loss in faith in humanity? Only a couple hundred million below Robert Deniro.
 
You mentioned that it's an Adam Sandler movie. That does the job.

I have to imagine that this guy has a video of a movie studio CEO murdering a prostitute. His career over the several years doesn't make any sense otherwise.
Actually, it does. $2.7 billion box office gross. Isn't there a thread in MD about loss in faith in humanity? Only a couple hundred million below Robert Deniro.

Wow. That surprises me. I googled around to double check and even his newer movies are still making a profit.

So, I guess the real question is how many people have murdered a prostitute while Adam Sandler has been filming them, so that he can blackmail this large a group into paying to see his movies? I can't see a second reason for them to be going. I get that prostitution is a more dangerous business than most, but I didn't realize that the body count in it was this high. Maybe there should be some kind of government inquiry into that or something.
 
Million Dollar Arm, 6/10: Stars Jon Hamm as a sports agent with a dearth of clients. He arranges for a talent show in India for kids to try pitching for a big prize and a tryout with MLB teams. India has a passion for cricket, not baseball so it's a tough sell. In any event the competition yields two decent prospects (and their translator) who are flown to the USA for a tryout. It's based on a true story and these two kids are still knocking about the minors. The movie is ok and has a couple of mildly amusing scenes.
 
Actually, it does. $2.7 billion box office gross. Isn't there a thread in MD about loss in faith in humanity? Only a couple hundred million below Robert Deniro.
Wow. That surprises me. I googled around to double check and even his newer movies are still making a profit.

So, I guess the real question is how many people have murdered a prostitute while Adam Sandler has been filming them, so that he can blackmail this large a group into paying to see his movies? I can't see a second reason for them to be going. I get that prostitution is a more dangerous business than most, but I didn't realize that the body count in it was this high. Maybe there should be some kind of government inquiry into that or something.
In general, he seems to draw at least $100 million. So at $10 a ticket, approximately 10 million people have killed prositutes with him close enough to witness it. He apparently is more dangerous to prostitutes than Charlie Sheen.

What is amazing is that Punch Drunk Love which he was allegedly pulling off a great performance did worse than Eight Crazy Nights, a soundly panned film. Which does explains why Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, and Adam Sandler have it in their best interests to not try to be good actors, even if they could act.

This does beg the question, though, why is Andy Dick and Tom Green not nearly as successful as Vaughn, Ferrell, and Sandler. What is the threshold between successful and not successful in a crap comedy?
 
This does beg the question, though, why is Andy Dick and Tom Green not nearly as successful as Vaughn, Ferrell, and Sandler. What is the threshold between successful and not successful in a crap comedy?

Tom Green was a one trick fad. He got laughs out of fucking with his parents and that friend of his that I'm pretty sure was retarded. Andy Dick was never really anything more than a curiosity on that one TV show... I forget it's name.

But Sandler was great on SNL, and his first few movies were pretty good. Or maybe rather, there were enough moments of genuine hilarity in those movies so that he deserves a lot more credit than Green and Dick.

Vince Vaughn is great in the right role. Swingers, Wedding Crashers, and several others have shown him to be a solid comedic actor. The problem is that he's now the same guy in every single movie. He's been typecast and until he breaks out of it, he's just sad.

Will Ferrell? He was also great on SNL and has made some really great comedy movies. And his HBO special, where he plays George W. Bush is brilliant. It has some curiously oddball and unnecessary elements to it, but those are brief in an otherwise excellent show.
 
Turner (7/10)

About the painter William Turner. Arguably the first modern painter, ie not trying to paint as realistically as possible. The film is gorgeous. The portraits of the people is fantastic. The film might as well have been called, "Ugly people having sex". But that's part of the appeal. It's sweet to see people past-their-prime feeling attractive for a moment. The film is slow paced.

But it suffers a bit from lack of tension. Turner is just a pleasant guy. A really sweet and thoughtful guy. Extremely humble. All the time. No conflict. And so it goes on the whole film.
 
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The Fault in Our Stars - It is a teen romp movie about terminally ill or otherwise really boned teenagers. So the romp is less rompish than say Bring It On. The acting is good and plot well centered. The film definitely tugs at your strings.

Oddly enough, my one problem with the film isn't as much the film as it is the viewing. I feel like I'm a voyeur in the story, witnessing another family's incredibly difficult journey. If this were a true story (specifically, obviously this stuff does impact real families), I'd feel that they would have authorized this. But with it being "fictional", I feel a creepy sense of... to be honest... I don't know what. I just feel like I don't have the right to feel sad about the characters, as if it affects me personally. I've never had this feeling about a film before. I didn't get this feeling while watching The Day of Wine and Roses which involves a couples' decent into alcoholism, and equally of fictional merit. That film was very hard to watch just in the sense of the characters' suffering.

The Fault in Our Stars, offers some perspective both from the parents, their ill teenaged daughter, and even those around them. I don't know whether being a parent now affects me in this way. The film is worth watching, it is good.

3 of 4
 
Riddick
7/10


Very enjoyable romp with the uber-escape convict, Richard B. Riddick. Most of the movie shows how he survived being left for dead on yet another hostile planet with yucky animals. His interaction with two sets of merc teams was very watchable. Only downside, it was pretty simple plot, and though I can believe in Riddick's world that necromancers and Elementals exist, and that he can outsmart a bunch of low IQ mercs, what I found unbelievable was that

a self-proclaimed lesbian, with nearly zero interaction with Riddick, is ready to play hide the salami with him by the movie's end. His macho-ness can even turn lesbians!



Yeah, no. Completely dumb and unbelievable.

Otherwise, a fun watch.
 
Some Kind of Hate

High school nerd guy gets picked on to the point where he hits the bully back. The problem with this is that the high school nerd guy looks to be at least 25 and is the farthest thing from a nerd there is. He's tall, muscular, broad shouldered, and by any standard is a good looking guy. So following this he gets sent to some camp for wayward kids. There he gets picked on a again, but also gets totally laid by the hottest chick there. Then at some point, some chick who committed suicided there starts taking vengeance for him and blahablahblah.

This movie sucks. Avoid it.

2/10
 
Oblivion - 7/10

A fairly good sci-fi movie where Tom Cruise and one lady are doing stuff on Earth after a war with aliens. It's decently done but the main problem was that there were various plot twists here and there throughout the movie and you could see each one of them coming a half hour before they arrived. Good as a popcorn flick, though.
 
Private Number

It looks like a below average TV movie, the characters are annoying, and the device used at the end is even worse than It Was All Just A Dream.
It's a supernatural horror/thriller/suspense film that is not horrific, not thrilling, and not suspenseful. This is as far as this review goes. It's more of a public service announcement to not waste your time watching this turd.

3/10
 
Oblivion - 7/10

A fairly good sci-fi movie where Tom Cruise and one lady are doing stuff on Earth after a war with aliens. It's decently done but the main problem was that there were various plot twists here and there throughout the movie and you could see each one of them coming a half hour before they arrived. Good as a popcorn flick, though.


I watched that awhile back and was reminded of why Cruise is a "movie star." He can carry a film that would have otherwise been just okay.

Next thing I watched was Edge of Tomorrow, and was reminded that he's even better with a good cast and good story.
 
Battle Beyond the Stars

7.5/10

This Roger Corman-produced film is one of the better among the many sci-fi films made in the wake of Star Wars' enormous success. The story idea is not really new--this is a recycling of Seven Samurai in outer space--but it is a good plot that recycles well, and this is a fast-paced film that is quite entertaining. Among the mercenaries hired to protect a peaceful planet from a tyrannical warlord are George Peppard and Robert Vaughn (sort of reprising his Magnificent Seven role). However, the real talent involved in this one was on the other side of the camera. John Sayles wrote the screenplay, James Horner composed the score, and a certain James Cameron was the art director and supervised many of the visual effects. The latter are nothing groundbreaking, but they aren't bad for a film made on a budget of less than 10% of that of The Empire Strikes Back (which came out the same year).
 
The Ridiculous Six

This is an Adam Sandler movie made exclusively for Netflix. The premise is that six sons, all with different mothers, but the same dad (Nick Nolte), set out to rescue him after he's been kidnapped by a bandit gang.

Sandler stars in the lead as White Knife, who was abandoned by his father and raised by an Apache tribe.

It only gets worse from there. Sandler attempts another ridiculous accent, that of a stoic Indian, and has all these Apache stealth and speed powers. Ugh. Could there be anything worse than him trying to play the straight man to 5 other buffoons?

The thing about this movie is that when coupled with it's initial Odyssey-like feel, it could have been really good. It has so many elements that could have made for a great western comedy, that if put in the right hands, could have been great. But like too many other movies with great potential it wasn't in the right hands. It does have some genuinely funny moments but those feel almost accidental compared to the rest, some of which are a little too juvenile even for an Adam Sandler movie.

The only thing that gives it any appeal is the fact that it's a movie on Netflix with good production values. It doesn't look like a shoestring budget indie movie, which seems to make up about 75% of Netflix movies.

3.5/10
 
STAR WARS the Force Awakens (7/10)

[blink]Warning, Star Wars review by Star Wars fan!!![/blink]

I'm biased. I'm a huge Star Wars nerd, (the Nerd Awakens, lol) I love the silliness and pulpiness of it. Yes, I'm aware they're all shit films that make no sense.

First off, it's pretty apparent that Disney managed to identify what it was in the original films that people liked and delivered that. My hat off to them. It did feel a lot like a remake at times. But I suspect that was about calming the fans and make it super super clear that they respect the fans outrage at the shitty prequels. I'm hoping the next one will try to go places.

Annoyances:
I docked points for the main story. Blowing up yet another Death Star. Really? It's done already... TWICE!! A new Darth Vader with the same outfit. Pretty weak idea. The original helmet was cooler and had a use. This one was just an outfit. Annoying how they keep changing the design of the Storm Troopers for each film. Why? The whole thing with Storm Troopers is that they're all alike. Pretty weak that they just got a new Sith emperor as if nothing had happened. Ok... some innovation would have been cool here. This is after all a new empire rising from the ashes of the old.

Awesome stuff:
One thing I did notice which I thought was a nod to the originals is how the staff on Death Star III has 70'ies hair do's and side-burns. For no real reason other than that was the look of the originals. I just liked that detail.

The renegade Storm Trooper. Great idea and cool as fuck. Good actor and well handled all-in-all. I also loved loved loved how the new emperor is called "the supreme leader". Lol.


Snope kills Dumbledor... I mean Han Solo. Fuck that was cool. IMHO necessary to make the film work. Without it, it would just have been a lame remake



No, this review is not made with any kind of detached observation in any way. I'm lapping it all up
 
Star Wars - 9/10

That's right, I'm not calling it A New Hope and I'm not calling it Episode 4. It's just frigging Star Wars. It's an awesome movie and a lot of fun to watch.

Empire Strikes Back - 10/10

The prefect sequel that does everything right. I totally figured out the Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father before he revealed it, though, due to having watched the movie at least a dozen times before.

Return of the Jedi - 8/10

Fuck you, Ewoks. That bullshit was bullshit. The rest was really cool, though. I'd also like to point out that the Emperor's overconfidence did, in fact, turn out to be his weakness while Luke's faith in his friends ended up being totally justified.
 
STAR WARS the Force Awakens (7/10)

Annoyances:
I docked points for the main story. Blowing up yet another Death Star. Really? It's done already... TWICE!! A new Darth Vader with the same outfit. Pretty weak idea. The original helmet was cooler and had a use. This one was just an outfit. Annoying how they keep changing the design of the Storm Troopers for each film. Why? The whole thing with Storm Troopers is that they're all alike. Pretty weak that they just got a new Sith emperor as if nothing had happened. Ok... some innovation would have been cool here. This is after all a new empire rising from the ashes of the old.

I haven't seen it yet, but those would seem to be more than mere annoyances. Another Death Star? This isn't Superman where the only way to beat him is with a piece of a certain type of rock. It seems a gigantic and lazy failure on the part of the filmmakers and writers to have gone back to the Death Star again. And like you say, it's an empire trying to resurrect itself after being handily defeated, but it sounds like all they've done is hit the reset button. Obviously I'll have to see it for myself, but that sounds terrible.

Awesome stuff:
One thing I did notice which I thought was a nod to the originals is how the staff on Death Star III has 70'ies hair do's and side-burns. For no real reason other than that was the look of the originals. I just liked that detail.

That is a nice touch, but it doesn't equal good filmmaking. And I think that's the difference between the first two movies and everything else that has come after it. The first two movies were good movies supported by this super cool, visionary new world, where the rest have been vehicles for special effects with the incidental occurrence of having various biological entities in them doing some things. Granted, that's oversimplified. But there hasn't been a good Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back.
 
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