News:

Welcome to our site!

Main Menu

Rate the latest movie you've seen.

Started by GalacticBusDriver, February 16, 2013, 12:37:09 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

caseagainstfaith

Cage is really the human embodiment of "hit or miss".
Please visit my site at http://www.caseagainstfaith.com  featuring critiques of Lee Strobel and other apologetics.

Aroura33

Quote from: caseagainstfaith on February 21, 2015, 06:55:13 PM
American Sniper

I oppose the war.  But, I want to try to discuss the film on its own merits.  Occasionally when I watch a movie, for whatever reason, I'm not able to "get into it", for lack of a better word.  Obviously, whenever you watch a movie, you are, well, watching a movie.  But you are supposed to, to some degree, feel as if the story is unfolding before you.  But on occasion, I can't do that.  I just feel like I'm watching actors saying lines.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad movie or bad acting. I'm not sure why I feel that way. But, through this movie, that is how I felt, I felt constantly aware that I was watching actors saying lines.

The Islamic enemies are portrayed one dimensional, they are just guys that have to be killed.  The scenes while he is at home, you are to understand that he is becoming emotionally distant. The wife tells us this.  But, I didn't feel like I was really being shown his change.

So, just from a movie perspective, I didn't particularly like it.  I've seen worse.  But, I can't recommend it.
I just saw this last night.  Or most of it anyway.  I didn't make it to the end.  It's rare I don't finish a movie and don't care.

I completely agree with your review.  Normally, I cry at the drop of a hat in movies, and they don't have to subscribe to my own belief system to do so (Ala the fairly religious Le Miserables, I still bawl like a baby at the end, even though I obviously don't think that is what is going to happen when we die).  If a movie is well done, I'm still able to sympathize with the characters, or at least feel SOMETHING about the story being told.

American Sniper was, simply put, not a good movie.  It's bland, everything is very black and white. Or brown and white, as the case may be.  Like CAF says, the Arabs are all one dimensional bad guys, not a one of them ever turns out to be anything but a bad guy.  The hero is also very one dimensional.  His wife and friends do (very, very briefly) say things indicating they aren't all gung-ho for the war, but none of that ever penetrates super snipers thick skull.  He's got his duty, and he does it without much (if any?) hesitation.  And he's always, always right. He never makes a mistake.  Even Superman makes mistakes!  Tha'ts why people love Superman, he's still human and errs.

Perhaps that is what I found boring about the movie, the complete lack of any moral ambiguity or real humanity out of the main character. I'd like to make it clear this is not the actor's fault, it is the way the character is written, and apparently the way the book is as well.  Why he even has to see a councilor when he gets home is a mystery to me that makes no sense based on the rest of the movie.  He doesn't seem to doubt himself or what he's done at all, ever.  Why is he there?  This entire part of the plot reads as false, inserted to try and add depth to the main character, but is transparent as a plot device to gain the audience sympathy and nothing more.

This movie is about a superhuman sniper who never makes mistakes, a great hero doing great things to protect his great country, that's it.  There is no more substance here than that. 

I missed the final bit of the movie, my daughter woke up crying, and I had to go tend to her. I told my husband to leave the movie going, I didn't care if I missed the end.

No out of 10 rating, but I don't recommend it either.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.  LLAP"
Leonard Nimoy

Hydra009

#1127
Hansel and Gretel:  Witch Hunters.

"Whatever you do, don't eat the fucking candy."
- Hansel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9246msCh7x4

Hoooboy, where to start with this one!  First off, I knew exactly what I was getting into.  I knew it was bad, but I wasn't sure if it'd be so bad it's good or so bad it's horrible.  The first half is just plain awful, but it did build up to actually pretty thrilling action scenes.  All it all, it falls more on the so bad it's good side.

It's a completely braindead movie along the same lines as Doom or 300.  If you're looking for something other than action and spectacle, you're not gonna find it.  It's like John Carpenter's Vampires with witches instead of vampires. 

Fun facts:
* Hawkeye is Hansel.  Jean Grey is a witch.
* Surprisingly Wraith-like witches and holding pens.  The Stargate Atlantis people should sue.  :P
* Everyone casually cusses and uses modern lingo like "that was awesome!".
* The weapons are absolutely ridiculous for the time period.  For any time period.  We're talking automatic dual crossbows, some sort of collapsible rifle, and even a minigun in a setting where the primary building material is wood.  WTF.
* Midget witches are called mitches.  Or at least, they should be.
* Nude bathing scene.  Bow chicka bow wow.  (hat tip to SGOS)
* Gretel is served some porridge that is "just right".  *groans*
* No breadcrumbs, Gretel?  *sad face*
* Witches fly through the dense forest instead of over it like Endor-based stormtroopers, with similar results.

Drinking game:
* Take a shot whenever Hansel or Gretel is knocked unconscious, when Hansel falls down, or someone says the word witch.

SGOS

Quote from: Hydra009 on March 03, 2015, 11:08:23 PM

If you're looking for something other than action and spectacle, you're not gonna find it.  It's like John Carpenter's Vampires with witches instead of vampires. 

Edit Fun facts:
Don't forget the scene of bathing with the "good" witch in the magic healing pool.  OK, that's not a fact, but it's at least worth the price of the rental.  I wish that scene would have lasted a few more seconds, though, or maybe just rent a continuous loop of that 5 seconds of erotic bliss that lasts for an hour.  And I'd pay $1.50 to see Gemma Arterton (Gretel) even with her clothes on.

Munch

Just saw the Babadook. Whatever expectations I had for the movie was turned on its head, what I thought would be a general monster movie, turned into something very deep, relatable, intense and altogether a very human movie/ Essie Davis' role in this was some of the best acting I've seen in a horror movie in a long, long time, I was on the edge of my seat because of her role.
Great movie, might not be for everyone, but if you take what this movie aimed to be instead of what you expected it to be, your realize how good it is.
'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

SGOS

Foxcatcher 8/10

Back in the late 80s or early 90s John Dupont, heir to the Dupont fortune, shot and killed an Olympic wrestler who was living and training on his estate.  I remember the incident, but didn't follow the story closely enough to know many details.  It received quite a bit of news coverage.  It was rumored (or perhaps decided.  I can't remember) that Dupont was off his rocker.  This is the account of that very disturbing story.

Steve Carrel plays John Dupont.  It's the first time I've seen him in a serious role, and it was indeed serious.  I think he may have smiled once in the film.  In fact, his character scared me a little.  He played an eccentric who didn't try to act intimidating or tough, but was weird enough to be frightened of, and he played the role well.  Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo also star.

SGOS

Cinderella  (2015)  9/10

It lags for the first 20 minutes.  I usually prefer the original Disney frame by frame animation, rather than live actors, but I liked this one.  Stays pretty close the original Disney script.  Has a lot of poignant moments, and is the quintessential happy movie.  I usually get pissed off by people talking in the theater, but of course this is a children's story, and I rather enjoyed those little voices expressing wonder at various times during the movie.

SGOS

Vice 7/10

I'm thought the 40 year old movie Westworld (Yule Brenner, Richard Benjamin, and James Brolin) was a wonderful movie built on the Michael Crichton plot of a theme park gone berserk, and I wished there would have been more of it.  Vice at first seems like a ripoff of Westworld, but soon takes a slight twist and presents the same situation but more from the perspective of the androids than the guests of the park.  I gave it points just because I loved seeing more of the Westworld scenario.  It had lots more potential that wasn't developed, however, and I thought the characters were a bit wooden.  I don't think it's as good as Westworld, which I'd recommend before this movie, even though Westworld was made in 1973.

the_antithesis

Blackmail (1927)

The boxed set of cheapo DVDs I've been watching boast 20 classic films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock is one of those directors whose work I have not seen. Not much, anyway. So this is a nice opportunity. Most, nay, all of it is his early work. Nothing older than 1940. It's got several of his silent flicks. It's educational.

The film in question today made me realize something: Alfred Hitchcock was the Michael Bay of his day. The scene that made me realize this was when the titular blackmailer flee from the police in the British Museum. Why in the museum? So we can have an exciting chase sequence in an exotic location. That's why, motherfucker. In the rough outline, it probably just said something like "the blackmailer is killed while trying to escape the police." In fact, the whole chase probably happened off-stage in the original play. But here we get a ten minute sequence that isn't very good, either because they actually filmed it in the museum and were limited in where they could film or this was on sets and were even more limited. In either case, the British Museum is an unimpressive-looking place. Just a bunch of boxy glass cabinets containing things you can't really make out in long shot.

But there are differences between Bay and Hitchcock. For one, Hitchcock gives a shit about telling a good story. Or at least telling a mediocre story well.

I am reminded of the 2005 film Derailed starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Anisto that was also about blackmail. Owen plays a sad sack who nearly starts an affair with some woman he meets on the bus, only they get attacked and robbed while they're in the hotel and then the robber starts blackmailing them both. So for a decent chunk of the running time, we have to watch this sad sack get toyed with by the blackmailer. That kind of shit pisses me off. I just can't stand that kind of shit. It's not entertaining to me. It's the opposite. I do not hate it, because hate is an attracting force. I loathe it. I find it repellant. And ultimately boring because nothing new is really happening. The whole movie is twiddling its thumbs until the unbelievable resolution. Why I watched the whole thing puzzles me in hindsight. Must have been married, I guess. She would have me watch all kinds of horrible shit with her.

Blackmail, on the other hand, does not have the blackmailer show up until nearly an hour into the film and then less than fifteen minutes later, the tables are turned on him and he has to go run into a museum and die.

That said, it's not a particularly interesting film. The plot isn't, I mean. These days that sort of thing has been done to death, see the above mentioned Derailed. The lead actress is not very good. I found her shrill and annoying rather than sympathetic. The only interesting thing she did was right after she'd killed her near-rapist, she's standing there in her underwear still holding the knife in a daze. It's a nice still photo, but this is supposed to be a motion picture.

Blackmail is historically significant in being Britain's first "talkie" according to Wikipedia. Also according to Wikipedia, it started as a silent production and switched to talkie later. This was obvious during the opening scene where the girl's police detective helps bust some guy for having a criminally bad comb over. This action-packed opening is also reminiscent of Michael Bay since it has fuck-all to do with the rest of the film. The whole sequence is done silently, making me think this was another silent film until the dialog started in a later scene. During this Hitchcock use an interesting technique used to add dialog to a silent picture.

You see, silent films weren't silent as they had a musical score but without dialog because they had trouble synchronizing the sound with the image. (this was an element in the film Singing In the Rain) While some theater smay have lacked a way to play recorded sound and would have a musician play along with the film (as seen in The Three Amigos, of all things) others could and dialog could be played as easily as any other sound.

In this case, Hitchcock filmed his actors from the back so you could not see their faces while the dialog was played. It still doesn't work very well, but it got the job done.

All in all, it's a nice enough film but probably not a very memorable one beyond the observations I've listed here.

caseagainstfaith

#1134
I saw several films on an international flight.

John Wick 3/10
I'm surprised it got 83% on the Tomato Meter.  I thought it was pretty crappy.  Keanu Reeves is some badass assassin who left the business to have a normal life with a wife.  The wife dies. The son of his former boss kills the dog his wife got him.  So, of course, he has to go kill everybody in his former organization.  When his boss explains who this John Wick is to his son, the son says, "who is this guy, the Boogie Man?"  The father says, no, Wick is the guy the Boogie Man is afraid of.  Uh, yeah....

The Equalizer 8/10
This one got 61% which seems low to me.  It's another "former assassin who left the business gets back in business again".  Except Denzel Washington is more fun to watch than Keanu Reeves. And, apparently, his character was always a good guy badass instead of a bad guy badass.  So, he finds himself platonic friends with a hooker (Chloe Grace Moretz) that gets beat up by her bosses.  When he goes to protect her, he gets more than he bargained for...

High Noon.  5/10
A classic, highly regarded western that I had never seen before.  I didn't feel it aged well.  Maybe great for its time, but, not very sophisticated.  The bad guy is a guy that was previously apprehended by the hero. Originally sentenced to die.   Sent up north where his punishment was first downgraded to life.  Then pardoned after 5 years.  (Damn northern liberals, LOL)  So, he comes to town with revenge on his mind. In a plot contrivance, the hero just got married to a pacifist Quaker and retired.  And the new marshal wasn't due in town until the next day.  So, for a day, the town was to be without an official marshal.  When news breaks that bad guy is coming to town,  he un-retires even though his new wife says she will leave him and leave town on the next train if he does so.

One plot point that just drove me crazy the whole movie...  We're told that the bad guy and his gang are coming in on the noon train.  Uh, no, they are already at the town's train station and for some reason are merely waiting until the noon train to come in before walking into town. In fact, for a while, the wife and the bad guys are all at the train station.  She's there because she says she is leaving on the noon train.  And them, just waiting for the noon train for no explicable reason. Did I miss some plot point there????  The whole movie I was saying "what the fuck are the bad guys waiting for???" Drove me crazy.  Did I miss something?

So, the noon train comes. That is the queue for the bad guys to walk into town to try to kill the marshal.  The bad guys are just plain one-dimensional bad guys that inexplicably like to wait at train stations.  The hero had tried to find people to help take out the bad guys.  Several people had said yes, but back out.  So, he has to take on the bad guys by himself. Though his pacifist wife winds up successfully shooting one.  Even though she presumably never shot a gun in her life. Bad guys die.  Movie ends.  Hope I didn't spoil anything.
Please visit my site at http://www.caseagainstfaith.com  featuring critiques of Lee Strobel and other apologetics.

SGOS

Quote from: caseagainstfaith on March 24, 2015, 06:46:06 PM

High Noon.  5/10
A classic, highly regarded western that I had never seen before.  I didn't feel it aged well.  Maybe great for its time, but, not very sophisticated.

I actually saw that in the theaters when it first came out.  Mostly, I remember going to movies with my little friends.  This is one of the few movies that I saw with my family.  This thing was hyped big.  Maybe mostly by my father; I'm not sure.  It may have won an award.  I was excited to see it.  My father even more so.  Afterwards, my father talked about how good it was.  It was about cowboys, so I liked it pretty much, but apparently not as much as my father.  I rented it a few years ago from Netflix.  I have no idea why the movie got so much acclaim.  I think maybe it had something to do with Gary Cooper and the theme song.

Sal1981

Snow White and the Huntsman. 6/10

Cheap, subpar entertainment, I enjoyed my coffee more than this movie ... mmmmm coffee.

caseagainstfaith

6/10 seems high for a movie that you really didn't seem to like at all...
Please visit my site at http://www.caseagainstfaith.com  featuring critiques of Lee Strobel and other apologetics.

stromboli

Quote from: SGOS on March 24, 2015, 07:58:06 PM
I actually saw that in the theaters when it first came out.  Mostly, I remember going to movies with my little friends.  This is one of the few movies that I saw with my family.  This thing was hyped big.  Maybe mostly by my father; I'm not sure.  It may have won an award.  I was excited to see it.  My father even more so.  Afterwards, my father talked about how good it was.  It was about cowboys, so I liked it pretty much, but apparently not as much as my father.  I rented it a few years ago from Netflix.  I have no idea why the movie got so much acclaim.  I think maybe it had something to do with Gary Cooper and the theme song.

Tex Ritter theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX0RakvyZ1I

stromboli

High Noon was just a vehicle to get Cooper an Oscar. Good gritty drama, but simplistic by today's standards.