Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[caseagainstfaith]

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

Fair enough.  But, I'm still mind boggled about why we were told the bad guys were coming in on the noon train when they were at the local train station the whole time and simply walked into town when the noon train came.  I'm still utterly baffled unless there was some plot point I missed...

[Sal1981]

6/10 seems high for a movie that you really didn't seem to like at all...

My scale is logarithmic.

[kilodelta]

Netflix recommends that I watch "God is Not Dead" with Kevin Sorbo because of my interest in Breaking Bad... am I missing a connection here?

However, with an average of 4.2 stars, they think I'll rate it 2.7. But, I watched the Bible Reloaded review and think I don't have to bother watching the whole thing.

Who wants to film God is Not Not Dead with me? We'll do a scene by scene reshoot with a Christian strawman played by... who's the opposite of Kevin Sorbo? Elvira? Sarah Silverman? ...yeah, one of those two.

[stromboli]

Nudity? See, there's the problem. If you made a movie with copious nudity people would watch it. Make sure it is guilt laden, like the Cecil B. DeMille movies of yore. Lots of skin, gyrating dancers, all kinds of implied sininining, women moaning and orgasming off camera, make it all evil with the obligatory redemption at the end. I swear I'd watch it.

And fuck Kevin Sorbo.

[caseagainstfaith]

I watched a stack of movies on an international flight.  A couple of movies that should appeal to your inner geek:

The Theory of Everything.  9.5/10
Fantastic.  Can't say enough about this.  Loved it.  Loved it.  Loved it.  It is about Stephen Hawking's life.  It is more about his personal life.  The actor playing Hawking did a great job of portraying him loosing his muscular control.  It reminded me of My Left Foot.  There was some religious discussion.  His girlfriend is a Christian.  She had a cute comeback, at least in her dialog in the movie.  Since most religious comebacks are crappy, I have to give some props for the writer of the one line. (Or of the girlfriend if it really happened that way...) Minor little spoiler:

[spoiler]The girlfriend asks why he doesn't believe in God.  He responds, "physicists can't have their equations muddied up with supernatural agents." The girlfriend retorts, "that sounds more like an argument against physicists than against God"[/spoiler]

The Imitation Game  9/10
I loved this also.  Just a touch less than The Theory of Everything.  But, almost as good.  I understand it takes fairly significant liberties with the actual history for dramatic effect.  But, it at least in board strokes it tells the story of Alan Turing and his breaking of the German Enigma code in WWII.  Stars Bennidict Cumberbach (sp?) as Turing.  Turing was gay and he eventually committed suicide.

[caseagainstfaith]

Fury 7/10
WWII film about the final days of the war.  Pitt is the commanding officer in a tank within Germany pushing back against the weakening German defenses.  Very well filmed.  I read on Wikipedia that the actors went through 4 months of preparation including a week of boot camp run by real Navy Seals.  And the directory made them live in the tank for extended periods, eating, sleeping, shitting in the tank.  It used real working WWII tanks for the filming.  But it seemed to not have a real point, other than "war is hell".  I'd say its worth watching.  Its not particularly gory, but, there is pretty intense war violence depicted.

There was actually a fourth film I saw on that 14 hour flight, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.  I remember thinking it was good, but, with the 3 above sticking in my mind, the fourth just completely eludes me... LOL

[aitm]

Interstellar with whats his face,,,,you know the voice of that car guy,,Mccannaehy or whatever, anyhow,,,,a nice flick kinda sciencey that goes off into human emotion as the base of the entire fuckin universe,,,so,,,,,,,meh. Still a nice watch and all, if you can remove the realization that space has no gravity so some of the gyrations they go through are for drama,,,but…meh,,,,,still HEY! its okay……about a 5 outa 10 until the woo then it drops.

[Aroura33]

Interstellar with whats his face,,,,you know the voice of that car guy,,Mccannaehy or whatever, anyhow,,,,a nice flick kinda sciencey that goes off into human emotion as the base of the entire fuckin universe,,,so,,,,,,,meh. Still a nice watch and all, if you can remove the realization that space has no gravity so some of the gyrations they go through are for drama,,,but…meh,,,,,still HEY! its okay……about a 5 outa 10 until the woo then it drops.

I actually got into an argument with my husband over weather or not there is really woo in this movie or not.

Fact, they went to great lengths to get the science (mostly) right.  A physicist worked heavily on the script, as well as many other professional collaborations.

As to the woo stuff? 
[spoiler]I thought the same about the love stuff, crossing time and whatever.  But my husband said first, it sounds nice and appeals to the masses, but the MESSAGE of the movie is not that.  Love is not magic, it simply focuses one's mind on the subject of that emotion, like any other strong emotion.  The construct the others opened, he just filtered it with his thoughts, which happened to be about his daughter for very realistic reasons.  That was simply the filter through which he viewed the construct.

The message of the movie, the things that saves mankind is NOT love or magic or god or woo....it's science.  Without understanding the full nature of gravity, no amount of love would have saved anyone.  They needed a LOT of very advanced science even for plan B.

So I thought about it, and I agree.  It's just a message of hope, and one of fear, too.  We can and will reach the point in that movie someday, for real.  But will we secretly be using science to plan to save the world?  Or will we dismantle NASA and abandon our scientific advancements (like SOME people want us to?) and the possible future of mankind?  People are pushing for that.   [/spoiler]
So IMO, this movie was PRO SCIENCE and kind of specifically PRO NASA, which I agree with fully.  We always need to look forward to the future with hope, to explore the next horizon.

Anyway, Michael Caine (one of my favorite actors of all time) reciting Do Not Go Gently with the fate of the entire race in the balance was one of the most beautiful moments in movie history for me.

At any rate, I totally disagree. 10/10.  check out their special feature on the science of Interstellar. It's out on DVD now so you might be able to find the special feature...out in the nets.
It might change your mind a bit. :)

[caseagainstfaith]

I thought the ending of Interstellar, whether you call it "woo" or not, was too silly.  It was good up to that.

But, the fourth movie I saw on the plane, how could I forget!

Gone Girl 7/10
I enjoyed it a lot.  And there was some T&A in the movie, that was blurred on the airplane screen.  Dammit.  Though I didn't really care for the ending.  I guessed who the primary villain was, but, I think that you probably were supposed to.  But, the story doesn't even really get twisted until after the villain is revealed.  After that it gets really twisted. Its a David Fincher film. LOL  It has Neil Patrick Harris in a small role.  He's not really like his Barney Stintson character.  But, his character here is also straight.  And when we see his high tech residence it did make me think of Barney.  LOL.

The basic premise, if you haven't heard, is that Nick Dunne's (Ben Affleck) wife goes missing.  Most people thought they had a happy marriage.  But as the investigation proceeds, it seems it wasn't so happy after all.  And maybe Nick killed her.

[SGOS]

I just watched Interstellar last night, and thought it was OK.  Some of the character development and the science fiction required me to stretch my imagination too much, but I did like it better than when I saw it the first time at the theater, when I was more or less unimpressed.  The intersection of the dimensions was depicted in a way that didn't make sense to me:  You can't talk to people in other dimensions, but you can communicate with them by moving small objects around in mysterious ways.  Why can you do one thing, but not the other?

I understand not going anywhere without leaving something behind, but sacrificing crew members to change a circumstance with no guarantee that things will work out favorably, was just weird.  It reminded me of Dorothy leaving Oz by deciding all she had to do was click her heels together:  "Lets see we are stuck in space, and  maybe I can kill another crew member to get me home, or alternately, I could try clicking my heels together.  I think I'll try killing another crew member first."

[SGOS]

The Rewrite  8/10

Showed up at the Redbox last week, with Hugh Grant and Marissa Tomei.  I wouldn't call it a romantic comedy, although it has elements of one.  It's very light.  I enjoyed being entertained without having to do a lot of deep thinking.  It's just fun.  Hugh Grant plays his usual Hugh Grant character.  Marissa Tomei shines.

[Sal1981]

Skammerens Datter (Shamer's Daughter) - 5/10

Pretty boring fantasy film about a girl and her mother with the gift to ... shame people and able to detect shame in people or some shit. Was pretty original angle, but the cinematography was amateurish at best.

[the_antithesis]

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.

Next time, try Outland.

[kilodelta]

Nudity? See, there's the problem. If you made a movie with copious nudity people would watch it. Make sure it is guilt laden, like the Cecil B. DeMille movies of yore. Lots of skin, gyrating dancers, all kinds of implied sininining, women moaning and orgasming off camera, make it all evil with the obligatory redemption at the end. I swear I'd watch it.

And fuck Kevin Sorbo.

Yeah. I think a lot of nudity will work for my movie. But, I'm not too sure about the Kevin Sorbo being fucked scene... but, I'll put it in there for you. What should be fucking him? Horse?

[the_antithesis]

Tremors... all fucking four of them.

Finally got around to watching all four Tremors movies. The first one is a classic, the others not so much.

The original Tremors, for those who haven't seen it, and if you haven't stop reading this and go watch it right the fuck now. Jesus. Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's a movie where Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward play two dimwitted handymen in a tiny Nevada desert town that gets attacked by giant underground monsters. Now go fucking watch it.

For the rest of us, the movie is brilliant because it does two things well. The first is it slowly reveals the monsters over time and the nature of the monsters keep us thinking the wrong thing so that more can be revealed. This keeps the mystery going and fresh for a decent chunk of the movie. The second is it establishes these characters are dumb, but they need to think their way out of their situation. They whole movie is they get into one situation, and then have to come up with a plan to get out of it. This was a delicate balancing act to have the characters do dumb, even childish things yet make it believable that they could think their way out of the situation.

Less successful were all of the sequels, even beyond the constraints of much smaller budgets for effects and actors. Part of it is I think the writers were working on the script for over a decade before the movie actually got made. Writer S. S. Wilson mentions that the original title was Land Shark until the SNL sketch forced him to come up with a new title. That was 1975. So the first film had a very nice polish that can only come from years of tinkering. It didn't hurt that they simply had better actors, either.

The sequels were made much, much more quickly and it shows. The scripts have some shining moments but most of the humor is more dumb than funny and the cleverness is more than a bit lacking, probably hitting a low point in the third movie when a new life stage for the monsters is christened "ass blasters." *sigh*

Overall, the sequels are enjoyable if disposable. I'll probably forget I saw the third one by tomorrow morning and in two weeks I'll remember I saw the fourth one but forget most of what happens in it.

So it's yet another unnecessary franchise that would have been better if it were just one movie, see also Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix, Star Wars, and The Miracle Worker.

After seeing the first movie, I thought what would have been a good idea for a sequel would be to have Bacon and Ward's characters in another place dealing with a new monster. I thought an underwater monster would be a good way to go and call it Undertow or something stupid like that. Oh well.