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Some films I've seen this year that were memorable.
Arlington Road (1999)
Kind of hard to describe. I'd just end up pasting the IMDB description. This is a mind-fuck style of movie. Teacher who focuses on domestic terrorists finds himself perhaps on the trail of one, himself. Drags a little bit here and there but definitely a worthy watch. Recommended for fans of Fight Club. [8/10]
Citizenfour (2014)
Edward Snowden documentary with some insights into how the information was obtained and leaked and how the journalists have been releasing it, focusing a lot on Snowden himself.
Breach (2007)
FBI investigate a high level long-time senior employee for selling secrets. Their method is to employ a young aspiring agent to investigate. [8/10]
John Doe Vigilante (2014)
A man kills people who he believes deserve to be killed because the law can't touch them. He's driven by the some crimes that affected him that were never resolved by the legal system. Films the vigilante killings and sends the recordings to the media, becoming a national sensation. [9/10]
V/H/S: Viral
"Scary" movie genre. Watched it on Halloween with a few friends. This surprised me by being not awful. Several short stories in succession by different producers. Probably better if you're wasted. [5/10]
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Just watched the hunger games the final movie.
8/10
It's probably a whole point higher than others would rate it because I enjoy movie with dystopia background.
Overall pretty solid movie, I don't want to spoil too much but that one scene really shocked me.
the end wasn't really predictable until this movie, which was a surprise.
There were some poorly written lines that made the theater laugh out but it's nothing big.
The whole series is pretty well done minus the romance.
From manipulated into playing twisted games into uprising war, the planning of each movie was quite impressive, it wasn't structured so rigidly as 1. Game 2. War 3. Ending.
(technically it did, but it didnt make her into a war machine, which I really liked)
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I liked that about the books - she's not a killing machine, she's just a regular person. The writing did a good job of portraying that. The romance in the books was weird as well, but I think they were trying to not be another Twilight with some stupid sappy love story.
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Watched Terminator Genisys.
Really not as bad as the box office bomb would indicate, but it's very much a one act show dragged out over an entire movie length. Was obviously intended as a series reboot. First half was rehashing T1 and T2 and then showing how those movies wouldn't matter for the first hour or something. Second half was just rehashing T2's conclusion except in "modern" times.
But still a better movie than T3 and T4. Which says more about how terrible those movies were.
Also, Sarah Conner's character archetype irritates me to no end. Why does "tough and capable" always have to coincide with "gigantic chip on shoulder"?
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On November 23 2015 11:08 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Watched Terminator Genisys.
Really not as bad as the box office bomb would indicate, but it's very much a one act show dragged out over an entire movie length. Was obviously intended as a series reboot. First half was rehashing T1 and T2 and then showing how those movies wouldn't matter for the first hour or something. Second half was just rehashing T2's conclusion except in "modern" times.
But still a better movie than T3 and T4. Which says more about how terrible those movies were.
Also, Sarah Conner's character archetype irritates me to no end. Why does "tough and capable" always have to coincide with "gigantic chip on shoulder"?
Reminded me a little of a Star Trek Episode called, "The Trouble with Tribbles" from DS9, when the whole DS9 episode was superimposed over scenes from the original Tribble Episode from the 60s at points. My fiancee and I saw it over the summer when the movie we wanted to see was sold out.
Not the best movie, not the worst. Mental chewing gum
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On November 23 2015 11:08 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Watched Terminator Genisys.
Really not as bad as the box office bomb would indicate, but it's very much a one act show dragged out over an entire movie length. Was obviously intended as a series reboot. First half was rehashing T1 and T2 and then showing how those movies wouldn't matter for the first hour or something. Second half was just rehashing T2's conclusion except in "modern" times.
But still a better movie than T3 and T4. Which says more about how terrible those movies were.
Also, Sarah Conner's character archetype irritates me to no end. Why does "tough and capable" always have to coincide with "gigantic chip on shoulder"?
I am very glad that it failed at the box office tbh.
For me personally it is basically an accidental persiflage of the first two flicks, which were great.
I think the reason for that is the inability of modern Hollywood to develop characters. Many new films are all payoff with no buildup. Directors don't take their time to develop characters because big parts of their adolescent viewers lack the attention span to follow such things. This leads to a situation where we quite often get walking cliches instead of characters.
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Watched the new Bond movie today, was largely disappointing, but more details below
James Bond 007 - Spectre
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Daniel Craig (Bond), Christoph Waltz (Blofeld), Ralph Fiennes (M), Lea Seydoux (Madeleine), Andrew Scott (C), Ben Wishaw (Q)
148 Min, Action
I already said that I didn't like the movie, but we'll get later to that part. First I want to explain what the movie did well. The production value is high. There is a lot of high value stuff gliding through the picture. Be it James' car, the evening dress of the Bond girl or the exotic wood desk on which the antagonist sits (or the biggest explosion in cinema history). You can see the big budget in every scene and it makes atleast the look of the movie top class.
The next positive part is the best action scene in the movie. A close quarter fist fight in and through a narrow corridor. It is intense, executed well and there is a real payoff. This leads me directly to the first negative point: The action scenes.
The action scenes aren't exactly done well. The first big one comes out of nowhere and lacks a payoff (or build up), it just happens and we don't know why this happens, it takes 50 minutes until we get a real frame of reference and get in the know on what and why it happens. The second big action scene just drags along, again without a real payoff or climax. It is long, a car chase through several sequences... aaaand than it is just over and the movie enters a new setting. This is disappointing and doesn't exactly meet the expectations.
The next one is ok and the final 2 are severely lacking again. You just ask yourself "and that's it?". This feeling of disappointment also gets caused by the plot.
As already mentioned we don't get a frame of referece until minute ~50. Up to this point it is just scene after scene, they just fly by and you cannot really make something out of it. The middle part drags along quite a bit until you get the cool fight scene. I wouldn't have been sad if this part would have been some minutes shorter. Spectre tries to include the happenings of earlier Bonds in it's story and it doesn't do a good job at that. We get a thin explanation of a conspiracy of a super secret society. The movie has 150 minutes, that's really thin I have to say.
The introduction of the villain is the only cool part of the final. It develops itself over 2 big scenes and settings, but neither of them is really satisfying, the action is rather short and doesn't feel rewarding. In both scenes there's dialogue, then some shooting, some explosions and that's it. This movie is directed much worse than for example Casino Royale. There are some okay buildups and some very average ones, the payoffs are unrewarding (with one exception), the whole thing just screams "average". Very disappointing.
There are also some weaknesses regarding the dialogue, but in my opinion they don't really tarnish the overall impression anymore. The damage is done by the action scenes (very important in each Bond movie) and the plot (which doesn't get a frame of reference first and drags along after that with a really thin explanation of the happenings in earlier Bonds).
When all is said and done the movie is really average. Director and Bond should be changed. The high production value, the good looks and the one scene described save this one from utter disaster. The weaknesses are still many and rather dominant. i wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. Hardcore Bond fans might still watch it but please don't spend money on it in cinema (one shouldn't get rewarded with your money for that).
Pros: high production value, good looks, one cool action scene
Cons: Plot, directing of action scenes in general, director and Craig seem to have enough of the series
4.5 out of 10 points
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Saw Mockingjay part 2, thought it was good, somewhere between Catching Fire (the best) and 2014's part 1 (the worst). Seems like they got all of Philip Seymour Hoffman's scenes in.
A worthy ending to the series, Jennifer Lawrence is a really good actor.
Too bad I watched it in an auditorium filled with stupid prepubescent girls who couldn't stop checking their fucking phones during the dialogue scenes (easily the best parts of the movie for someone who hasn't read the books), should've waited for week 2 or 3.
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On November 25 2015 10:37 riotjune wrote:
Saw Mockingjay part 2, thought it was good, somewhere between Catching Fire (the best) and 2014's part 1 (the worst). Seems like they got all of Philip Seymour Hoffman's scenes in.
A worthy ending to the series, Jennifer Lawrence is a really good actor.
Too bad I watched it in an auditorium filled with stupid prepubescent girls who couldn't stop checking their fucking phones during the dialogue scenes (easily the best parts of the movie for someone who hasn't read the books), should've waited for week 2 or 3.
I had the, "who is that?" and, "Wait what happened to Snow?" person next to me, -___-
Fine for what it was, dragged on a bit for me but I really didn't think + Show Spoiler +They needed to do the epilogue, I'm sick of having every detail spelled out at the end of a movie. Like Katniss and Peeta had this many children named X, Y, and Z and their bloodtypes are this this and this and here is Jlaw looking marginally older. Better than Harry Potter for the ending scene but still dumb.
I also thought the Coin being questionable was a flip that was just turned on. I didn't finish the last book so I didn't know how it was going to end, but it felt like, boom all the sudden we can't trust her
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On November 26 2015 01:31 ThomasjServo wrote:
I also thought the Coin being questionable was a flip
I see what you did there...
My take on it:
+ Show Spoiler +When Gale said "I...don't...know..." it pretty much confirmed Katniss' suspicions that is was Coin who ordered the first and second bombs that killed the children and her sister. When Coin suggested they hold another hunger games, it was then Katniss made up her mind and decided to use this opportunity to kill her.
I wondered if Plutarch foresaw all this. If he did, it means he probably knew civilian noncombatants were going to be bombed, wouldn't that make him just as bad? Unless he found out after the fact and knows about the natural consequences of Katniss' actions.
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On November 26 2015 03:17 riotjune wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2015 01:31 ThomasjServo wrote:
I also thought the Coin being questionable was a flip I see what you did there... My take on it: + Show Spoiler +When Gale said "I...don't...know..." it pretty much confirmed Katniss' suspicions that is was Coin who ordered the first and second bombs that killed the children and her sister. When Coin suggested they hold another hunger games, it was then Katniss made up her mind and decided to use this opportunity to kill her.
I wondered if Plutarch foresaw all this. If he did, it means he probably knew civilian noncombatants were going to be bombed, wouldn't that make him just as bad? Unless he found out after the fact and knows about the natural consequences of Katniss' actions.
+ Show Spoiler +Seemed a lot like Varys from GoT or the spider at the end if that was the case. Like yeah, a few capital brats and some medics (woops Prim too) get killed but hey, democracy. Ends justify the means.
I dunno, I don't think it was an awful movie, I don't think it was a great movie rather like the source material.
I did question when the game makers had all the time to install all these traps all over the capitol, why the mutts all of the sudden came from the mind of Guillermo Del Toro and Pan's Labrinth, and can move silently through calf deep sewer water.
Minor gripes I found more amusing than distracting. Good for riffing on outside the theatre.
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28090 Posts
Southpaw was better than I expected. Definitely not top tier and the storyline is kind of generic, but I enjoyed it.
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Sleeping with Other People
Basically the same thing as Friends with Benefits.
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The Martian:
+ Show Spoiler +I am happy he had enough failures. But still figures it out.
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Spotlight
Incredible. The movie is about the research of an investigative team, called Spotlight, into the handling of pedophile priests by the Catholic Church, centred in Boston.
Spotlight is an in-depth investigative team at the Boston Globe. They are in the process of selecting their next investigative target when the Globe gets a new editor - a Jew named Marty Baron - who suggests that they investigate reports of child molestation by Catholic priests in Boston. In particular, they attempt to focus on the system that has been put in place to protect the pedophile priests and the Catholic Church at the expense of the past, current and future victims. This system involves secretly settling with the working-class families that have had their children molested, and shuffling the priests around to new locations when they have been discovered raping children.
The film is wonderfully written. It manages to convey a lot of relatively complex information and plot quickly, while ensuring that it is still understandable and impactful. There were frequent points during the movie where a new fact would get dropped, and my friend and I would turn to each other in shock. That is not something that happens a lot in Hollywood movies. There were extremely emotional scenes, especially with the abuse survivors.
There was powerful imagery
+ Show Spoiler +while a reporter is on a walk with a survivor, they come across a Gothic church looming up above a playground with children playing.
And there was great acting. None of it was overdone, all of the characters were realistic. The reporters were all people doing a job that they love on a story that they believe in. None of the antagonists were Dick Dastardly style villains - most of them were people doing jobs, and the rest of them were protecting the Church. In particular, Liev Schreiber's portrayal of Marty Baron somehow struck a cord with me - a man doing his best to uncover the scum haunting the Boston area.
Most of all, though, this film really drove home to me the extent of the cover-up the Church did for rapist priests. I'd always heard stories and brushed the numbers off, but this really made me understand just how widespread the cover-ups were. Interviews with survivors are harrowing enough. When you realize that these are 3 out of 1000 cases, and that the Church is allowing for this to continue in perpetuity it strikes a chord in you. When you see the track marks from a survivor, when a grown man cries in a restaurant when simply asked what happened between the priest and himself, when you're told that these are the lucky ones, it has to strike a chord.
This is one of my favourite movies.
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Just saw Clue (1985). Pretty enjoyable movie if you have nothing to do 
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Just saw Mockingjay 2.
I quite liked it. Though after mockingjay 1 I lowered my expectations. It had some pacing issues but all in all it was pretty good. 7.5/10
I am wondering though what the deal was with the + Show Spoiler +. They seemed to focus on those as if setting up some plot point/twist later on but it never happened afaik. Am I missing something?
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I found my favorite chrismas movie ; The Ref
it features Kevin Spacey as a not so loving head of family
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Today it is another movie out of my favorite genre, SciFi. I'll review Gravity made in 2013. The movie got ridicolous hype, 7 Oscars, rave reviews all over the net (apart from strange people giving 0/10 because it is the internet). Do I think it is a great movie? No, I don't think so it is good and enjoyable at your home setup and very good on the big screen in cinema. I'll go into detail in the review and I'll make a second post with some general thoughts. Here we go boys!
Gravity
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Cast: Sandra Bullock (Ryan Stone), George Clooney (Kowalski), Ed Harris (voice mission control), Phaldut Sharma (Shariff, voice)
91 Min, SciFi
So, where to begin? First I have to say that I watched the movie for the first time on the big screen and had my mouth open for the whole 90 minutes. The look was just awesome. Now at home it still looks reaaaalllly well, but Gravity is a movie made for cinema. It is still enjoyable at home and I will start with the stuff I liked about it.
First strong point as already said, is the optic. Film looks great. it achieves the great look with "panorama-earth" shots, displaying the astronauts as tiny spots above the earth or infront of the huge cosmos around them. The look was absolutely stunning in cinema, probably one of the most beautiful ever. At your home screen it is still very good and highly enjoyable.
Second strong point is writing and lead acting. What do I mean by writing? The film does a good job of introducing the characters in the first scene without wasting much minutes to do so. The characters are hyperboled a bit. Kowalski always talking and being his George Clooney sunnyboy self, Stone a bit clumsy and nervous as she is on her first space mission. Good job showing us general character trades in a few minutes. I also have a slight point of critique regarding the first scene, but that comes later. Bullock does a remarkable job playing her (panicked) character after everything goes south, you feel the tension and the despair as she is aimlessly floating through space.
The tension is held high throughout the movie, there are no dull lengths, scenes and runtime are pretty short and a lot of stuff happens once things go to shit. It becomes a bit of an actionthriller playing in space after the first 15 minutes.
Now let's go to the weaker points. I already mentioned a minor gripe with the first scene. What is it? The characters get introduced in the first scene, each major character getting screentime. Sharif didn't get screentime, you just heard his voice. It was a cheap giveaway, Sharif would be toast and this is precisely what happened. Took a bit of tension away.
Next weak point is the character development. Ryan Stone turns from being a bit clumsy to wonderwoman who pulls off ridicolous stuff in 90 minutes. Since the movie tries to be a halfway realistic portrayal of the dangers in space (no sound explosions, realistic portray of gravity or the lack of it etc) this is a bit of a problem for me, introducing the action element of a hero into a "realistic" SciFi setting. On top of that they throw in a half assed Stone's dead child story without really working it out. The character development and story telling could have been clearly better.
The science geeks were critical of the one or other point, especially regarding the equipment of the astronauts. For me this is very, very, minor but I feel most of it could have been adressed rather easily to avoid the criticism.
What to make out of this? Gravity is a good and enjoyable movie, even very good if you can see it on the big screen, but it falls short of greatness despite earning 7 Oscars. Why? In the end and especially if you watch it more often, it becomes clear that it is an example of "style over substance" despite being a good one. There isn't much development of character, there is no build up of tension, it is a very well looking and very well acted action film playing in Space. I would recommend it for anybody still. It is a great experience regarding the visuals and the good acting makes you feel the tension and despair as the tiny astronaut helplessly fights against the dangers presented to her by space.
Pros: acting, visuals, camera
Cons: Character development, story telling
7.5 out of 10 points
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Now some general thoughts regarding Gravity.
Sandra Bullock is almost 50. Why do almost all Hollywood actors consist of 50% plastic. It always leaves me quite irritated.
Where does the movie fall short in comparison to ATG movie like 2001, Alien , Blade Runner or The Thing?
All this movie have stunning visuals for their time, especially Blade Runner looks great, despite being more than 30 years old. Also The Thing from 1982 is still looking as good as it's remake from 2011. Blade Runner has great philosophical themes which get worked throughout the movie in big detail, it has much more to offer than it's looks and this sets it apart from Gravity, distinguishing a good movie like Gravity from a great one like Blade Runner. The same goes with 2001 from Kubrick. It has more plot, more dimensions and layers to it.
Alien and The Thing work better if you rewatch them because the buildup of the tension is much better. Gravity turns into an action movie after 15 minutes, Alien and The Thing take their time, tension gets build gradually and it works much better this way, paranoia level is climbing slowly and steadily, giving you better value if you watch multiple times.
Gravity falls short of offering anything behind looks and acting, it offers no multiple layers or themes and doesn't build up it's tension masterfully and patiently and these are the reasons why it falls short of being great. It gives us ATG looks and then some but lacks in other areas. Still nice though...
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