the good...

good will hunting (1997) - some of the best dialogue i've ever heard in this... whether it was being poignant or emotional or hard-hitting or funny or just plain entertaining it was always razor sharp. i loved the bar / park bench scenes especially. the characters were great, especially williams' shrink. wasn't a massive fan of the ending but still a nice story in all.

brazil (1985) - this surprised me. it's nothing like twelve monkeys at all... in fact a lot closer to monty python in terms of dark humour and overall bizarreness. hugely entertaining and visually immense, with a brilliant ending

the bad...

despicable me (2010) - ok maybe it wasn't THAT bad... it's mildly amusing and occasionally cute, but unlike - for example - TS3 (or most pixar titles), it never really advances beyond being a kids movie. the characters are pretty weak and underdeveloped and it never felt like there was anything running below the surface for adults to appreciate

what dreams may come (1998) - ugh, this was just a non-stop barrage of sappiness that got stuck in the slow lane early on and never picked up. the visuals looked nice but as far as metaphorical images of heaven & hell go it was all pretty cliched and unadventurous, despite a clearly large budget. the plot gets complicated towards the end but i stopped caring enough to actually follow it

and the ugly...

in the mouth of madness (1995) - how the blazes this got a 7.0 on imdb is completely beyond me; it's one of the worst horror films i've ever seen. half baked concept riddled with plot holes and cliches, 2-bit characters, laughable acting, terrible effects and cheesy-as-hell soundtracking throughout. the only thing going for it is one unintentionally hilarious scene where a pack of evil dogs are set on a bunch of men with guns... "shall we use the guns??" "of course not! we'll just panic, run backwards and fall over!" *various disorientating close-ups of dogs gnarling prosthetic body parts* 

Il mercenario (1981)
Mixed bag western. One of the better Morricone soundtracks. Felt quite rough, not well told. Sometimes very cool. The woman was just annoying. 

I recently re-read the first book of Lord of the Rings and yesterday we watched the first movie. Dear god, how blinded must I have been that I considered the movies excellent when I saw them in cinema. Compared to the book this one was quite rubbish. So much silly hollywoodism and deep things being changed for the sake of special effects and fighting. Especially the squid at Moria and the "the black riders are 1 meter away from Arwen & Frodo but hey, let's ride for another 2km because it is so much fun fun fun!" left a bitter taste in my mouth. What a shame. Other parts are stuffed together so quickly and harshly that there is no sense for the journey at all. Not to mention all the crap with Isengart and Saruman. 

but as adaptation they are probably fair.

Whats on the page does not always translate well to the screen. 

and high-five to Shambler for using "hollywoodism" too, earlier in this thread 

 

Just watched The Nines, with Ryan Reynolds in a serious role. What a great little fantasy drama (sci-fi if you ask me, but not according to imdb). Probably an 8/10 - best i've seen in the last few weeks (since I wanked on about Martyrs).

Saw Centurion today as well. Not usually my type of movie, the historic epics have been done to death. But it's Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) so I had to give it a shot. It'd at least have great cinematography. Wasn't a bad film either. Predictable with the normal historic flaws but good visuals. Ended a little abruptly though, i'm guessing to set up a sequel. 

Elijah Wood/Frodo was just too annoying for me to ever have a chance of enjoying LOTR. Even Harry Potter would have been more bearable. 

I thought the LOTR movies were as well done as possible. The books are the real thing, but the movies are pretty good. I like the squid. I also like goofy things like Sauron's Mouth.

The one part that I found a bit cheesy was the green undead army in part 3. Oh well.

Some things are really beautiful in the movie, such as the use of Anglo-Saxon or whatever it was (Old English?). Generally part 2 is my favourite.

Elijah Wood was casted before 9/11, back when it was still OK to be all weak and sensitive.

I think what you call Hollywoodism is simply Jackson's total fanboyish reverence of the whole thing and a lot of it is already in the books, really.

The fighting is actually really good in LOTR. I could do without goofy dwarf jokes in between though.

If you like LOTR, you might be able to stomach The Nibelungs, the semi-recent made-for-TV version I mean. In some ways that is quite refreshing (set in the early middle ages instead of the late, for example, with matching costumes etc). Watching Kristanna L�ken brawl her way through the movie with various weapons is kinda entertaining, at least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjiLVk76TOo&feature=related

It's an international production, more in line with things like the 13th warrior etc. than LOTR. Mostly. It's known under several names, like Dark Kingdom or The Dragon King. 

Just got done watching Star Wars Episodes 1 through 6. What is the big flonking deal? Were 6 episodes necessary? The only characters I liked were Liam Neeson, black/red Sith bro, Emperor when he wasn't being a bitch, and Han Solo because he's Harrison mother fucking Ford.

Not sure why everyone likes the movies or whatever. I will probably never watch these again in my entire life. 

The Curse of the Ring: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387541/

I swear that movie has more names than I can keep track of. Saw a Spanish dub on a bus once. Truly enthralling experience.

On fantasy epics, in March HBO will start showing the first series of A Song of Ice and Fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atFX6keD95o 

I think with Star Wars, in order to love is so much you had to have grown up a few decades ago when they were made. Back then, they were good movies that introduced the scifi genre to blockbuster. Hence millions of fanboys.

But by todays standards, Star Wars isn't actually that good. But they had the huge franchise already built, so the last 3 movies were hugely popular again, despite being crappy childrens movies, ala Avatar.

But I still don't know why people love them so much these day. None of the Star Wars movies would make my top 200. I do enjoy some of the Star Wars games though. 

I will say that I appreciated the older (4 through 6) episodes better, simply because of their 70s 'charm.' Reminded me more of Alien or Indiana Jones or whatever, which I did grow up with. 

Boba fete, ig-88, and dengar. <3 

and still found Eps 4 and 5 to be classics. The rest are rubbish though. 

What's the big deal with the Fetts? They both got beaten like a couple of chumps ... I thought they were supposed to be bad asses? 

We played with SW action figures when I was like 7, happily inventing spaceship stories. I also had an album for these little sticky pics that you could collect. From Return of the Jedi.

A little later I got a cassette tape with the audio from Part 4 I think? The one with the garbage press. I used to listen to that and imagine the whole movie. I didn't actually see it until much later.

Childhood memories pretty much. 

Not bad, pretty quirky sense of humor that seemed just to poke fun at a statist, overly-beaurocratic government-run society.

But then shit got kind of eerie and conspiratorial. It was still had that quirky sense of humor took on a darker more serious tone at the same time. The dream sequences have some pretty obvious and some less obvious symbols to glean meaning from, and just looks cool at the same time. I also really like the world they made, it could have been inspiration for Bioshock in places.

Apparently there are two different endings according to Pope, and the version I saw ended with (SPOILER)

the main character getting tortured until he lost his sanity, all because of a computer error. 

***SPOILERS*** obviously...

from imdb:

Gilliam had trouble with studio producers over the black ending he wanted on the film. The producers wanted a "happy Hollywood" film which eliminated (among other things) the final transition and a critical line of dialogue which reveals the fate of Jill. These changes were made, and this "butchered" version was shown on US television at least once. Gilliam threatened to disown the film, and consequently the cinematic release and all videotape versions show the film essentially as he intended it to be seen (although the US cinematic release still omitted the line about Jill).

i can see how it would have been pretty easy to edit it into a happy hollywood-style ending. only really need to delete the last few seconds, the jill line and possibly the bit where deniro's character mysteriously disappears (which kind of gave away that it wasn't all real) 

version :) 

surprised no-one in the thread has commented on this. anyone else seen it? thoughts?

it's a guy ritchie gangster movie starring jason statham & ray liotta, and starts out pretty much how you'd expect from a combination like that but evolves into something completely different; a borderline art-house thriller focusing on psychological battles with occasional spiritual overtones

i'm not sure what to think of it. it's far from perfect - too many elements got thrown into the mix and much of its message got obscured by a rather convoluted plot (plus it borrows rather uncomfortably from the usual suspects in a few places) but the closing stages were a proper headfuck, with one of the most bizarre endings i have ever seen. worth the watch if you like head-wasting films that leave you slightly confused & asking questions, but it probably would have suited a different director better (though props to guy for having the balls to experiment a little)



speaking of gangster movies starring ray liotta, i also watched goodfellas for the first time too. great fun, brilliantly made & surrounded by an air of coolness throughout; can't pick any faults with it. but it was very much a closed book, unlike the above... the end was the end, and i didn't find myself dedicating any thinking time to it afterwards. which sometimes is fine, obviously, but i've grown to like a bit of open-endedness recently... 

but Goodfellas is great stuff, not quite Godfather/II level but very close. 

Plot was ok, action was nice. But a few things really stood out ...

1) The costume design, the building architecture and the design of the "Tron virtual world" wasn't remotely derivative of any recent movies. Everything was unique.

2) Watching "the younger Jeff Bridges". Actors and aging is on track to be a non-issue in the future.

3) The 3D and special effects were incredible. The bike fight scene was A++++++.

I'm actually interested in seeing what Tron Legacy video games are going to be like. 

Haha, I just noticed Tyres from Spaced in the zombie crowd in Shaun of the Dead (when Shaun runs off the let the others enter the Winchester). Never noticed that before. 

The Town (2010) (Extended Edition)

so-so. We (germans) had a really hard time with the voices. Muffled and full of slang. Halfway through the movie we enabled subtitles, then it was better. Car chase was nice indeed. Good use of subtle music. Weird cast for the FBI dude. Not so great ending. Won't watch it again but it is alright.

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