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

Bacillus anthracis said:
Coherence

This is one of those great hidden gems you hear about.

Several yuppie-ish couples get together for a dinner party on a night where a comet passes overhead. Then strange things start to happen. The events are based on Schrodinger's Cat thingy/whatever experiment, which is a cat imagined as being enclosed in a box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be released when the source (unpredictably) emits radiation, the cat being considered (according to quantum mechanics) to be simultaneously both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat observed.

Now, I don't really know what this^ means except to say that there appear to be infinite possibilities for people and events. But it doesn't really matter. You don't have to understand it to enjoy the movie.

Anyway, soon after dinner starts, the lights go out and several members venture over to another house to use their phone because all cellphone and internet service goes out. That's when the strangeness begins. You never really know who is who and the ending is great. That's all I'm gonna say because I don't want to spoil things.

See it.

8/10
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Concur. I'd liken it to another sci-fi film, the time-traveling Primer, in how it gets a lot out of a small budget. I think this one though provided more depth within the relationships and had better acting and directing.


It was particularly bracing to see Nicholas Brendon (Buffy's Xander) play himself basically, a TV actor AND alcoholic (google his police blotter). Except he was on the series Roswell here, which does play into the whole theme of the movie itself, of diverging histories, hopefully it was intentional. You had to question whether or when other characters diverged, and how early, like how he thought Laurie was a yoga instructor.

 
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - 9.5/10

Oh there is so much good and only a little bad in this movie for a Star Wars fan like me. Some things that had to carry on continuity rather than strike out into fresh territory. The thrill and delight in seeing that "Star Wars" logo on screen, hearing the fanfare and knowing you're seeing a NEW Star Wars movie. The sequel we've been waiting 30+ years for. What a feeling!

Great characters, great dialogue, interactions. I really admired the use of real-world effects rather than CGI. Kylo Ren wavering from being a Darth Vader wannabe to something almost demented, out of control, his calm easily and violently broken by bad news. The awakening of the Force within Rey, the way the light side seemed to claim her as its new champion. That lightsaber fight between her and Ren -a great one. Lots of action! I loved nearly everything about this movie.

What didn't I like? Yet another Death Star! Yes, it was bigger and had a longer reach, and also seemed to double as the First Order's main base. Thankfully its planet-destroying capabilities weren't a big feature of the movie: it was quite a minor part in the story. And considering the story, although it was exciting, it almost seemed as if there was too much story crammed in. Maybe an extended edition might help.

The other thing I wasn't keen on were the motion capture characters. Compared to the human actors, they seemed fake, false things. like cardboard cutouts there only as placeholders. Jar Jar binks seemed more real to me, although I really wish he'd wasn't there at all.

At the end the chase for Luke Skywalker ends in success. But when he is found, why no dialogue? I expected at least a "hello". After that, I turned to my friend and told her "I want more!"

A great movie, a great star wars movie, up there with ESB.
 
Mockingjay Part 2 - I walked into the movie theater, not having read any of the books and have only seen the the first three films. Before even the movie starts showing I know a couple things are going to happen, the foreshadowing might as well been on the black and white placard they used for dialogue in the silent film days.

Also walking into the film, there was the whole other issue, how to pull off the entire revolution and resolve everything in 2 hours. They split up the book, but yet seemed to have way too much ground to cover.

In general, most of my suspicions were correct. The film suffers from just having to do too much in too little allotted time. Some events and traps seemed just a bit too much and quite nonsensical in their development. For instance, hey, this death trap looks like a wonderful place for a propaganda op, isolated, very low, surrounded by potential locations for shooters, and small points of entry and retreat. Set up the cameras folks, I'm feeling good about this one! I literally laughed out loud when the propaganda director said that.

The traps? How much of the city was built to kill people?! Some of those things were ridiculously elaborate and seemed to imply such foresight to stopping invaders. But then they'd allow for the traps to take time to set up or would blindly target instead of just a brute force attack.

The mutts? WTF?! All of a sudden the movie went all horror film for a scene for no apparent reason at all.

I think the biggest issue, however, is the fact that events and plans don't seem to have much in the way of any consequences. *spoilers*

Attack on District 2 base. They need the weapons. So they bury the weapons. Apparently they'll just use sticks and stones instead.
Snows plan to shell the invasion in the outer rims of the Capitol, apparently that didn't even slow down the resistance. The invasion went off without any problem whatsoever.



The event that turns the battle itself makes no sense. *spoilers*

Alright, so they are retreating tens of thousands of people to a mansion (?), but then it makes sense that Snow would be gathering the child as a shield to get into the mansion. But then the plan for the revolution all along was to fake a Snow attack on television. But why in the heck would Snow bomb Capitol children in front of his gate? That offers no strategic advantage to him. What also makes no sense is how the First Aid responders for the rebellion somehow were ahead of the front lines.



I do like that they tried to fully resolve the governance issue. What I don't like is how...

The victors of District 12 are left to the last standing building in the entire district with almost no infrastructure for food... or people. You'd think the new President would at least have sent a space heater.



The movie had too much to deal with, which should be a crime because they set themselves up by having a lazy initial film to a book split into two parts. They made it a two film deal for money, but didn't bother to take advantage of having a two film option to fully detail the actual book. Shame on you Danny Strong.

2 of 4
 
DrZoidberg said:
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.
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I just think they went too far with it. The parallels were just nakedly obvious.

The main bad guy is a dude in a black mask and robes who was trained by an older Jedi master and it all went to shit and he was seduced by the dark side of the Force and the older Jedi master has gone into hiding in a remote location.

The main bad guy character is also revealed to be a close relation to a couple of the major characters.

Part of the plot revolves around tracking down and finding the older Jedi master.

There's a new Death Star. And it's even BIGGERER. It's no longer moon sized, it's a whole fucking planet! And it's got an even bigger superlaser.

Which has a weakness that is exploited and ace pilot does the deed of destroying the Death Star.

Cute non-humanoid droid that talks in bleeps and bloops has secret plans map that the plot revolves around.

Protagonist is orphan that lives on remote desert planet.

Main bad guy isn't actually main bad guy. He's just an enforcer and right-hand man of a mysterious dark lord pulling strings behind the scenes who communicates with him via hologram.

Death Star isn't commanded by the Darth Vader clone, but by a brutal senior military commander (Hux/Tarkin).

And a lot of fan service just to keep people happy. Look, here's the lovable droids from the original movies! And Chewy! And the Millennium Falcon! Remember them?

Etc. etc.

It all came across as a very safe and calculated movie whereby the marketing executives at Disney figured out a formulaic way of regenerating the buzz of the original movies, to the extent that they just decided on a remake in anything but name.

I still thoroughly enjoyed it though.
 
MarkW said:
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).
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Thanks for the recommendation. Upon watching it, I realized I had seen it before as a kid... but only thing I could remember was the chick with giant boobs.
 
Lego Movie
10/10 (because I'm a sucker for these types of animations)

It's like Toy Story meets the Matrix meets Any Will Ferrel Movie. The inside jokes are hilarious, and I can't imagine that anyne who played with Legos as a kid wouldn't enjoy this.
 
Saving Mr Banks
7/10
So this is a movie about the behinds the scenes of when Walt Disney was trying to make Mary Poppins
And it is an entertaining movie
All the characterss are interesting and the actors all do well with their roles
The story is well written and ties the various ideas together quite well
So overall a very entertaining and interesting movie

Tremors 5: Bloodlines
5/10
So this is the new tremors movie
And...........ehhhhhhhhh
It just seems to lack something
The story is good....ish.....but never really draws you in
The effects are good.....ish.....but some parts just don't seem to scream "tremors"
The acting is good......ish
you get the picture
The whole movie is good......ish
So not a terrible movie, but for a huge fan of the originals it was slightly disappointing

Spongebob Squarepants: Sponge Out of Water
6/10
Ok so this movie is probably on par with a decent episode of Spongebob Squarepants
There are some parts that do really well, but other parts that are kinda a miss
So your overall enjoyment will probably depend on how you like the show
If you like the show then this will be worth watching
If you don't or are on the fence this probably won't sway you

Ant Man
7/10
So one of the latest Marvel movies
And it is up to their usual standards
The acting is good, the effects are tight, and the script is well put together and fun
And big kudos to their use of the shrinking/expanding mecahnic and changing perspectives which leads to some great scenes throughout the movie
So yeah I would say this is another home run for Marvel
 
Shaun The Sheep Movie - Aardman's latest escapade into the realm of "clay"mation feature films. The movie revolves around the consequences of serious brain trauma, especially when it intersects the banal world of fashion. This film was close to perfect. Think of it like the first half of Wall-E without the second half when humans enter the plot and pretty much kill it. Plenty of laugh out loud gags, and plenty of entertainment to be had. It is very hard to image a film with no spoken language, but Aardman pulled it off and extremely well.

3.5 of 4.0
 
Fido

This one's been around for a while, but worth a look if you like the horror-comedy genre. It's about a Leave it to Beaver style of 1950s world where the zombies have been conquered first by an actual war, and then further by turning them into personal servants via an electronic collar that makes them very docile and obedient. It nails camp-1950s really well and manages to never take itself too seriously. You get the feeling there are messages about conformity and racism but you're never beaten over the head with it. You can choose to read into it or not. Either way, it works.

Anyway, under pressure to keep up with the Jones's, a woman gets a zombie because her new next-door neighbors have six. Her son is a misfit nerdy little guy who quickly takes to their new zombie and names him Fido. Fido seems confused a lot; kind of like he's always on the verge of figuring out what's going on but never quite does. Of course, things go wrong, some bloodiness ensues, and there's even a pervy neighbor with a hot zombie girlfriend.

It could have been better though. It really goes south at the end and feels like they either got lazy or couldn't figure out what the hell to do with the script at that point. It also feels like they were on to something that could have been great, but that certain "it" was just missing. Still though, it's worth a look.

6.5/10

They Live

If you haven't seen this before, you should be ashamed. It's a must see for any fan of sci-fi. I won't go over any details because almost everyone's seen it at one point. I mention this movie though because it still holds up. It was as good of a B movie as there can be, and that applied to then as well as now. So it gets B movie consideration in terms of rating.

10/10

Get Hard

When obscenely rich hedge-fund manager James (Will Ferrell) is convicted of fraud and sentenced to a stretch in San Quentin, the judge gives him one month to get his affairs in order. Knowing that he won't survive more than a few minutes in prison on his own, James desperately turns to Darnell (Kevin Hart) -- a black businessman who's never even had a parking ticket -- for help. As Darnell puts James through the wringer, both learn that they were wrong about many things, including each other.

This^ is the blurby summary of the movie that I copied and pasted from Google. It's as fucking horrible as it sounds. At some point, a movie like this will make you laugh because there's a joke a minute. But overall, you really should do that laundry you've been putting off instead.

3/10
 
Finally got around to watching the Star Wars yesterday.

Now, I'm a fan from way back. Went to see the original multiple times when it was new. Bought the novelization, the record album, the sketch book, the bed sheets, etc. When The Phantom Menace came out I managed to weasel my way into a press screening and saw it before it was released to the general public.

For this one I figured I'd wait until the hype died down a bit, read the reviews, avoid spoilers, and go see it when I didn't have to wait in line. Hello reserved seating!

Maybe I'm just a lot more jaded and cynical that I was back in 1977 (probably...I was 12 back then). Maybe the prequels ruined the experience for me...but when that logo burst onto the screen and began to recede into the stars, I felt...nothing. The famous crawl...nothing. I didn't want to cheer like some people did. I sat there with my arms metaphorically folded thinking "okay, let's see how this one is going to go."

And honestly, the first act fell kinda flat for me. Looked like Star Wars. Sounded like Star Wars. But it was more of an homage. Like Abrams' way of saying "If I could make a Star Wars movie but with all new characters, here's what it would be."

Then the second act came along, and it was like JJ was saying "okay, okay, I can't make a Star Wars movie without giving the fans what they want, so here's your favorite characters. Cool, huh?" Yeah, actually it was. Harrison Ford demonstrated why he's the biggest movie star to emerge from the franchise. He carried that part of the movie around on his shoulders, folks. This was "Star Wars Episode VII, The Force Awakens Starring Harrison Ford as Han Solo (and some other people)." Carrie Fisher was...odd. Like she'd either forgotten how to play Leia or made a decision to play her as if Leia had been on Xanax for about 20 years.

That said, the movie was picking up steam, and really paid off in the third act. With Kylo Ren, Abrams accomplished what Lucas tried and failed to do with Anakin in the prequels. A troubled young man who turned to the dark side, but still had a glimmer of hope within him somewhere. And like he did in the Star Trek reboot, Abrams basically said to the fans "here's the universe you've come to know, and the characters you love, and now we're going to take it in a different direction." I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the film won me over.

8.5/10


p.s. I didn't like Darth Andy Serkis at all. Is he supposed to be the Star Wars equivalent of Thanos?

p.p.s With regards to the final scene, I couldn't help but think

"oh god, it is nice to see Mark Hamill again, but please don't let him try to act."

 
Rare Exports
9/10

An arctic drilling crew discovers the ancient burial site of Santa Claus and unleashes an evil that was meant to stay buried. Best Christmas movie ever.
 
Inside-out 8/10

A animated film about the internal voices in our heads. Sadness, happiness, fear and so on. It's about a girl who moves to a new city and struggles with fitting in and goes through what could best be described as a depression. I saw it with my whole family, including with my sisters boyfriend. My sister was depressed and ended up killed herself because of it. So it was a good film for the family. It really cleared out the sinuses. Lots of tears there.

It's quite clever. More gimics than psychology. Good for the family. Especially if there's somebody in it who suffers from depression. In the film the depression is down to nature rather than nurture, ie which depressions usually are.
 
Ghosthouse (via RiffTrax) - Yeah, so umm... there is this ham radio enthusiast, and he over hears something horrific over his ham radio. With the help of science, he somehow tracks the source of the signal down to an abandoned building where a group of people have decided to camp out at... because the Internet doesn't exist yet and you can't just ask a local in Scituate where a good place to stay is. Granted, in Scituate, I don't there were any at the time. But maybe a few miles north in Braintree was a hotel that wouldn't have killed them.

I digress. The problem this film has, ignoring budgeting, and just crap everything else... when your characters are making the viewer feel like they deserve to die, you aren't selling the film well. 'Gee... two people already dead in that abandoned home... think I'll go in their one more time to take a bath." ?!?!?!

0 of 4 (Rifftrax 3 of 4)

Birdemic (via Rifftrax) - What the fuck was that?! Hey, where did the girls go (including the one he considers his Ferrari)? "They went to take a shit." Yeah, this movie does that as well. When scientists look back and wonder the worst effect that global warming had on the now lifeless planet... it'd be the apparent keystone portion of the plot to this "film". Computer graphics in Tron (the original one) looked more life like, and that'd be the best part of the film! What possesses a person to make such a shit film. The leading actor made Leonardo diCaprio from Man in the Iron Mask look like Leonardo diCaprio in Blood Diamond. 0 (a perfectly nice round number) of 4 (Rifftrax 2.5 of 4)

Egad, there is a fucking sequel to that monstrosity, and apparently the director/producer actually tried to sell this and there is a DVD with commentary including the director and the lead "actors". WTF?!! Sharknado!!!
 
Star Wars: A New Hope Awakens 2: The Search for More Money: 6.5/10

with all the bizarre remakes and reboots of old classics they're doing lately that basically are just the original movie told slightly differently with a few names and maybe a gender swapped around here and there, and how awful many of them have been (total recall, robocop, star trek, point break, and conan come to mind), it's nice to see them finally churn out one of these that wasn't a total catastrophe.
i'd put it a bit above avengers 2: weekend at ultron's, but a good bit below mad max: fury road in terms of this year's awesomeness.
 
Star Wars: The Force Awakens

8/10

A good popcorn movie, space opera style, that delivers what it needs to--fast pace, engaging new characters blending in with some old favorites, and the rousing John Williams score. It was disappointing, but not really surprising, to see how much of the plot recycles elements from the first trilogy. Given Disney's enormous investment in acquiring Lucasfilm, it's no shock that they wanted this movie to succeed financially, and giving people what they are familiar and comfortable with is usually the safe choice in that regard.
 
The Other Woman - 4/10

A Cameron Diaz romantic comedy about a wife finding out that her husband is having an affair and then teaming up with his mistresses to get back at him. It has some funny scenes and decent moments, but was mostly kind of dull and predictable.
 
The Keep (1983) 6/10

Just caught this on Amazon Prime - I remembered seeing this on cable several times in the mid 80's, but time hasn't been kind to this one. Directed by Michael Mann, the cast features Ian McKellen, Gabriel Byrne, Jurgen Prochnow and Scot Glenn. The movie is set during WWI in Romania and the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream sounds oddly out of place. There were some interesting scenes between Prochnow as a German army captain and Byrne as an SS commander with their takes on war and Germany's place in the world that I would like to have seen expanded on. The was also some bad overacting all around. After watching this I had heard that Mann had filmed over 3 hours of footage but lost control of the final edit. It's not surprise as the movie is a bit of a herky-jerky mess. I think this one could stand a remake, fleshing out each character's moral character and delving into the gray areas between good and evil.
 
Star Wars: The Force Awakens


SPOILERS:

Hmm... hard to know what to think about this. While seeing the movie I enjoyed it. I did feel a little annoyed that the plot was eerily similar to the original Star Wars movie, especially with the new "Death Star" (though it's not crazy that a government, after thirty years, would reinvent something that was a failure, thinking it was a good idea again, so maybe that's plausible).

I know that JJ Abrams was told that the movie had to be released in 2015 and that because of the time pressure he had to let go of the original writer and take on the writing himself. I think this may have produced a rushed script in which he relied too heavily on familiar plot elements and devices in order to finish scripting in time to start filming. I commend him on the restrained use of CG (much better than the prequels in this regard), but ultimately I found it difficult to really connect with the characters, even the old ones, because it was hard to sympathize/understand their motivations. So much back-story was missing and not enough good emotional acting to make up for it. For example, 1) Han Solo and Leia lost their child to the dark side and all they did was "go back to what I was good at". They were apart for a long time and when they finally meet up again there's no chemistry between the two characters; 2) the central plot element is a map to Luke Skywalker -- why is there a map? who made the map? how did they get the rest of the map? why are there parts of the galaxy that are unmapped but easily reachable with a small cargo freighter?; 3) Finn's character was very two-dimensional and I couldn't really connect with him at all. The idea of a stormtrooper turning to fight with the good guys is probably the most original part of the script and it simply wasn't handled that well.

It feels like the writing was just lazy, and because of that the story was far less compelling than it really could have been. There's so much potential in the Star Wars universe to be creative and inventive and JJ went with the familiar and unexplained. I really do hope that he has already thought out the next two movies and that the backstory will be filled in a bit (though flashbacks or exposition are poor replacements for original storytelling), that they'll go somewhere interesting with the future story, and that he'll have enough time (and/or help) to come up with a more compelling script.

By itself it was still a fun story, with exciting (albeit often unnecessary) action sequences. It was good to see Harrison Ford back as Han Solo, and I think he did the best acting job int he movie, but ultimately I don't think his character got what he deserved. I think JJ went for shock, but the scene wasn't played out well. I'll give it a 6/10 with the hope that it is building up for something much better in the sequel(s).
 
Good Will Hunting 3/10

What a load of crap. I'd saved this on my hard-drive for a special day when I wanted quality. It pissed me off. Completely bizarre and unrealistic story. So contrived and stupid. It wasn't remotely believable. Just silly. The point of the entire frame was to get Matt Damon and Robin Williams in the same room. They could've saved so much time shortening it. The rest was just transport. Everything about the kids life was uninteresting. The silliest sob story. His relationship with the Harvard girl was a yawn-fest. Baaaaad acting. And the long liberal speeches was a bore. People don't talk like that. There's a rule in fiction... show don't tell. They forgot that rule. How the fuck did that film get nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture? This is first year English major level of writing. So bad dialogue. Such a weak contrived script. It tries to make some blindingly obvious points about it sucking to be poor. This is not news. Also... everybody was hot and sexy with a smoking hot body. Wtf!!! Is this about being born poor or a porno?

We both sat with dropped jaws wondering how the fuck this got so high ratings. The good acting does not save this film. Yes, there's some top notch fine acting here. Both Matt Damon and Robin Williams to stellar performances. Stellan Skarsgård, who I know is a good actor, couldn't save his silly role. Such a stupid idea for a film.

Great disappoint.
 
12 Years A Slave


I've had this one sitting around for months, but never got around to watching it for some reason or another. I was missing out. This is a very good film. The performances are spectacular, particularly Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender. The pacing is slow, but superb. This is a movie that lingers on shots for maximum emotional effect. There's plenty of gut-wrenching scenes (it is about slavery, after all), but there's one that sticks out for me.

After a slave has died in the cotton field, his fellow slaves bury him in a shallow grave on the plantation and begin singing a hymn. Ejiofor's Solomon doesn't sing at first. He's refusing to participate because there's part of him that still believes he's not like the others. He's enslaved, but free on the inside. Then slowly, heartbreakingly, he joins in and begins to sing along.

9/10
 
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