Come December, keep in mind there is already a Star Wars thread - Movie Reviews

[Reply #200 on:]

Maz recently sent me another batch of movies/TV shows that I haven't seen. One of these movies was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I watched the other night because I was sad and the note inside the case said "watch this if you have/want a case of The Feels".

I really enjoyed it (enough to go and buy it the next day), even though it resulted in me sitting in the lounge room quietly sobbing and being glad that no one else was home to see me like this.

[Reply #201 on:]

Maz recently sent me another batch of movies/TV shows that I haven't seen. One of these movies was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I watched the other night because I was sad and the note inside the case said "watch this if you have/want a case of The Feels".

I really enjoyed it (enough to go and buy it the next day), even though it resulted in me sitting in the lounge room quietly sobbing and being glad that no one else was home to see me like this.

Sounds like a regular Tuesday for me.

[Reply #202 on:]

Will the new movie Pixels actually be a good film starring Adam Sandler

Raiders of the Lost Arcade already has the upper hand, of account of its lack of Adam Sandler.

The trailers are absolutely dreadful. And the reviews so far say the movie's even worse. They must have given Peter Dinklage a lot of money to show up in that garbage.

I finally got around to seeing the trailer for Adam Sandler's Pixels yesterday, and I have to say -- regarding the accusations of Sandler "stealing" the plot from Futurama's own "Anthology of Interest II" -- I really don't get what all of the fuss is about.

The way I see it, the main commonality is that the two stories are based on the basic concept of classic video games existing in our own world. Futurama poses the question "What if life were more like a video game?" This includes video game characters and tropes pre-existing in every day life. An alien invasion only exists in order to foster conflict and set up the Space Invaders spoof. Pixels, on the other hand, asks "What if aliens created monster versions of video game characters and sent them to invade earth?" There is a clear before-and-after and a warring, us-vs.-them scenario.

By the way everyone is talking, I was expecting to see a United Nations meeting gone awry, war room meetings at the Militari, and a geeky kid who grew up on video games having a final showdown to climactically save earth.

Nope. Just video game characters invading earth at the behest of some alien creators. Quite distinct, actually.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna see the movie, anyway. The cast alone is reason enough not to. Sandler hasn't released good movie in at least a decade, Kevin James' movie roles have left a lot to be desired, and Josh Gad is Josh Gad.  Besides, these are all comedic actors, and yet there was nary a funny moment in the trailer.

[Reply #203 on:]

Just saw Pixels.
To make it short:
a) The execution how various Arcade classics were transformed into weapons of war (and how they had to be fought) was hilarious.
b) The parts between the action sequences left a tad to be desired.

Unfortunately, b) could have easily been avoided. Sandlers movies usually follow the pattern of having a gang of several more or less crazy main characters. Most of them are "quite all right", but all of them havie their quirks, on which much of the humor is based on (often by running gags). Think of Sandlers movies what you want, but they usually give those characters enough personality, quirks and flaws. In "Pixels", this fell too flat. Giving their personaility a detail level comparable to "Little Nicky" would already have done the trick.

Anyway: The movie is basically a Big Hooray for the old Arcade Games, delivering them one last, impressive curtain. If you went to Arcades in the 80s, it's a must, and the rest of you young whippersnapper will probably be unable to understand the glory this movie did celebrate. And -no- having downloaded those revered classics on your PC does NOT sound, you kids...and now get off my lawn!!!

All in all, I will give it a
B-

[Reply #204 on:]

Hein's clearly been compromised. Somebody got to him, erased his brain, and made him think he saw a good movie.

[Reply #205 on:]

Someone must have sneaked up and used the Konami Code on him, then patched his firmware.

[Reply #206 on:]

Nice try, Adam Sandler's fake account.

Mind you, I haven't seen it. I have no opinion.

[Reply #207 on:]

I merely wanted to share Rick Astley with people.

[Reply #208 on:]

Fant4stic

I'm not even mad, that was an astoundingly hilarious 100 minutes of garbage.

D+

[Reply #209 on:]

The fact that it's that short means they probably edited the fuck out of it

[Reply #210 on:]

Yes. Editing is a thing that people do to films. I suspect that the new Fantastic Fuckup movie was involved in an editing process at some point.

I do not, however, suspect that it was edited well.

[Reply #211 on:]

I feel there's always a movie like this that comes out every year, but this is definitely one of those movies that will be shown to film students on how not to make a movie.

Also hands down the WORST villain costume I have ever seen in a comic book movie.

[Reply #212 on:]

At least it gave us this https://www.dennys.com/food/featured/fantastic-four-cheese-omelette/

[Reply #213 on:]

Irrational Man

No I know no one here really gives a crap about a Woody Allen movie. But it's a remake of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, which is wonderful and possibly my favorite Hitchcock movie, and I was so close to liking IR. But it's just so far up it's own ass and Allen as a director has NOTHING on Hitchcock, which makes the music choices and the very static camera direction so bleh when this is supposed to be a comedy/thriller or something.

It was just...frustrating to watch that.

B-ish

[Reply #214 on:]

No I know no one here really gives a crap about a Woody Allen movie.

Midnight In Paris was my favorite movie of 2011, Blue Jasmine was very good, and I'm a big fan of some of his older films like Sleeper and Play It Again, Sam.

He must be one of the most inconsistent directors ever though. Throughout his career almost every other movie he's made has been a stinker.

[Reply #215 on:]

Midnight in Paris suuuucks!

[Reply #216 on:]

I thought it was ok, Wilsons voice does grate after a while, but it had a certain charm.

Inside Out
The Feels!
Clever and fun stuff.
B+

What Dreams May Come
Robin Williams catchup (), I thought it was decent, the visuals and sets were impressive. The story was a little soppy but whatevs.
Mrs. Doubtfire next, and I might check out that TV show he was in with Buffy!
B-

[Reply #217 on:]

What Dreams May Come suuuuucks!

[Reply #218 on:]

I watched 3 hour long edit of Hobbit movies. It's pretty good now that things that annoyed and distracted me originally are at least greatly reduced and pacing is better. I only felt like maybe two little things were missing.


The Man from Earth
Interesting movie as it's just a man telling the story and conversation about it, plot is mostly some character development. Especially I like that it was very thought-provoking, which made it engaging.

[Reply #219 on:]

I had a double feature of End of the Tour and Man from U.N.C.L.E. I liked both of them a lot. Not much to say other than Henry Cavil is the living embodiment of Archer and had that movie had a Lana Kane equivalent, it would be my favorite movie of the year.

[Reply #220 on:]

I know that this will come across as flippant, but it's as close as I'm able to accurately describe the film.

Snowpiercer (2013)

Terry Gilliam and Philip José Farmer share peyote as they board a train from Interlaken, Switzerland to the Jungfraujoch, on Christmas holiday.  They pass the time by writing a screenplay, and later convince Fritz Lang to direct it.

As for a rating, I honestly can't conceive of a fair way to judge it, but I'll take a cut:

Aficionados of film: B+ to A-
University students: B- to B+
General audiences, younger: C to B
General audiences, older: F to C

For me, I would have been somewhat annoyed if I'd paid more than a few dollars to see it, but it drew me in sufficiently well to make me wonder what the next act would bring.

[Reply #221 on:]

Alright, I'll throw my review in the ring to balance things out a bit:

Interstellar

I really enjoyed most of this. It's well acted, has a good premise, the space travel and alien planet scenes are beautiful, and it uses some hard science concepts like relativity of time really interestingly. The first two acts are great and a twist halfway through ups the emotional stakes in a great way.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't think it's dazzled us enough and completely blows its load in the third act, asking us to suspend our disbelief for sentimental pseudoscience claptrap after already having forced us to do so for most of the movie while it played fast and loose with science. I'd compare it to if the final scene of 2001: A Space Oddysey was using exposition to explain exactly what was going on in a desperate attempt to make the audience understand and doing a really hokey job of it. It looks really cool and is interesting in theory, but it makes almost no sense and turns the whole story of the film into an unnecessarily distracting catch-22. What's most unfortunate is it all seems to be done just to give the movie an additional emotional punch that it really didn't need...I would have been far more satisfied with the story if it had continued on with no more twists after the second act.

Anyway, I think most people will not mind the ending, and to be fair, I enjoyed the movie for the most part despite it. But I think it's a very flawed movie, and a lot of people I've talked to about it have shared my thoughts. It's a much weaker film than Inception, which had a crazy premise but followed its own internal rules very well, whereas this movie has a solid premise but its plot kind of falls apart under scrutiny. If you go in with that knowledge you probably won't be as bothered as I was.

B-

Just watched this, in a near-ideal environment.

And I don't disagree with Josh's analysis or his technical criticisms.  Though far from an expert, I consider myself probably slightly better versed in the subjects of black holes, spacetime, basic physics and quantum mechanics than the typical movie goer.  And I couldn't help but comment to my brother at a couple of points that the centripetal force resulting from the depicted spinning of space vehicles would not only render any human occupants into gooey paste, but would likely cause the vehicles to rapidly disintegrate into their constituent components.  And the unsubtle homages to Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubric (and surely others with whom I've no familiarity) were slightly distracting and therefore annoying.
 
But... from my point of view as a science nerd with an overdeveloped sense of empathy?  Oh, my God.  The heavy-handed over-the-top emotional melodrama resonated with me perfectly.  It stabbed me in the heart with a red-hot blade, twisted it, ripped my heart out of my chest, and crushed it into crumbling dust that drifted away on the wind.  I was so choked up that it affected my breathing, and I couldn't have spoken a calm, coherent phrase if my life had depended on it.

[Reply #222 on:]

And I don't disagree with Josh's analysis or his technical criticisms.

I think you've somewhat mischaracterized my criticisms here. They're actually far from technical criticisms about the application of science...if anything, I had less problem with that than anything else. What actually got to me was that the entire emotional core of the twist at the end of the movie relies on incredibly (and predictably) cheap writing that creates a huge Catch-22 when you think about it.

Show spoiler

Basically, almost the entire plot of the movie hinges on the highly advanced beings we hear about at the end of the movie getting Matthew McConaughey's character to send those messages back in time to himself and his daughter. And yet, if he hadn't sent those messages, none of the things that led him to the point of needing to send the messages would have happened at all. It doesn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny, and the whole cycle is only written in so that there can exist the drama of having the father/daughter separated and then reunited. It's not organic or logical in any way, and being able to recognize that while I was watching the movie unfortunately took the sting out of the emotional punches that you described experiencing for me personally.

What bothered me most about that whole plot thread as well was that it took away from what was for me the much more interesting emotional conflict that is touched on in the middle of the film: the question of whether preserving and continuing the human race genetically is more important than the lives of humans who already exist. I think that ruminating further on that sort of big picture dilemma could have made more for a much more thoughtful and interesting conclusion to the movie, as opposed to doubling down on the whole "the power of love is the strongest force in the universe" silliness and ensuring that the individual characters were allowed to have a beyond implausible happy ending. I mean, not only does McConaughey get to survive going through a motherfucking black hole and affect the past, he then gets to see his daughter again before she dies and go to the new colonized planet where we can only assume he will get to shack up with Anne Hathaway who is still alive as well. Holy karmic invulnerability, Batman!

[Reply #223 on:]

I'm an empath.  My life is fueled by the deep emotions I synthesize when I sense deep emotions in (or see them portrayed by) others.  It drilled right into the core of my soul, and I revelled in it.


Guardians of the Galaxy

Silly, delightful, adventurous film that hits all the right feels.  I wish they'd either cleaned the language up or dirtied it down: the BS middle ground they chose grated on the nerves was actually distracting from the film.  Otherwise?  A pleasant, entertaining couple of hours.

B

[Reply #224 on:]

I'm confused when you refer to yourself as an empath. Are you saying you're an empathic/empathetic person (in which case I'm not sure why you'd point it out unless trying to imply that other people such as myself are less so, and thus assuming that we criticize films more analytically due to a lack of empathy for others), or are you trying to say you legitimately have a psychic sense of intuition that causes you to spiritually experience the emotions of other people (even fictional ones) through clairsentience?

[Reply #225 on:]

The former.  Considerably more so than the majority of people I know, and I point it out so that people who do not similarly have the deep feels understand the viewpoint from which I experience and rate a film.

[Reply #226 on:]

Okay. The word empathy refers to the ability to internalize, relate to, and understand another person's emotional state though, not a tendency to externalize and outwardly express those emotions yourself (which involves considering your own experiences and adding your own emotions into the mix), especially in a way that distracts the mind from all other thinking. There must be a better word for what you're trying to say that isn't technically implying (not what you mean, but what the word means) that we care less about other people and hence are harder on films because of that.

What you're saying does seem to exclude the possibility that someone can view a film and be deeply emotionally affected while watching, but then later deliberately choose to take a more objective approach in their criticism in retrospect and attempt to look past that initial reaction in favor of analyzing the more technical elements of how the film's story works logically.

I think the best movies are ones where the story is both emotionally affecting AND stands up to logical scrutiny, so that it can manage to affect you just as much no matter how hard you think about it...and in fact, might affect you even more the more you think about it as you start to comprehend more facets of it and realize more of its emotional implications.

Because I've seen plenty of movies that actually affect me on that high of a level, I'll be critically harder on movies that don't quite give me that, even if I was bawling my eyes out while I was in the moment of actually watching it. So I think it's slightly reductive to conflate empathetic experiences while watching a movie with a retrospective analytical criticism. Assuming that the only reason someone else could have liked a film less than you is because they didn't have as much of an emotional response to it as you did is a bit unfair.

[Reply #227 on:]

I think the best movies are ones where the story is both emotionally affecting AND stands up to logical scrutiny, so that it can manage to affect you just as much no matter how hard you think about it...and in fact, might affect you even more the more you think about it as you start to comprehend more facets of it and realize more of its emotional implications.

For sure!

[Reply #228 on:]

Big Hero 6

The visuals were spectacular and I enjoyed the story.

Exposition-crammed dialogue was borderline unbearable at times but overall I thought it was a good movie.

Show spoiler

Stand Lee cameo was unexpected.

[Reply #229 on:]

The Martian

Really fun with a great ensemble cast and a really good performance by Damon

B+

[Reply #230 on:]

I've been avoiding spoilers/trailers/hearsay about The Martian, which is tough because I even hear tidbits when listening to the radio news on my way to work.  Now I'm just waiting for some of the crowds to die down.

[Reply #231 on:]

Sicario

Masterful tension building, absolutely ridiculous camera work, and a morally difficult plot that raises a lot of questions. Great stuff.

A-

[Reply #232 on:]

Interstellar

Great movie that had me at the edge of my seat numerous times. The scene where Cooper watches the 23 years of recordings was particularly powerful.

However... it kind of lost me by the end. I'm not too bad at paying attention in movies but I found it really damn hard to figure out what the hell was going on, and it doesn't help when the characters insist on mumbling (looking at you, Michael Caine).

But I enjoyed it, and that's the main thing. The robots were pretty cool.

[Reply #233 on:]

Interstellar

Great movie that had me at the edge of my seat numerous times. The scene where Cooper watches the 23 years of recordings was particularly powerful.

However... it kind of lost me by the end. I'm not too bad at paying attention in movies but I found it really damn hard to figure out what the hell was going on, and it doesn't help when the characters insist on mumbling (looking at you, Michael Caine).

But I enjoyed it, and that's the main thing. The robots were pretty cool.

What a coincidence! I saw the Martian last night and it was pretty much the movie I wanted Interstellar to be. I like these stories that portray things that are plausible using the technology we will have in the not to distant future. I felt like Interstellar went off the rails at the end too. Anyway,

The Martian

Good moviefilm overall. I felt that some of the humor felt a little forced, but I really appreciate the writer of the original novel and the creative team behind the movie taking the time to put in their research to keep things relatively realistic. They created some very human drama without taking the focus off this guy being stranded on Mars, which is what I think everyone came to see. I feel like that's where Interstellar fell down, I thought I was going to see this serious space movie and it ended up being about how the one force that could travel through space and time was love. Anyway, I'd give the Martian an A-

[Reply #234 on:]

Crimson Peak

It's so good.

But seriously while I have problems with the plot and the pacing, as there's really little room to breathe in the movie, I fucking loved it and have already seen it twice. Also +1000 points for Tom Hiddleston booty.

A-

[Reply #235 on:]

Jurassic World

It greatly surprised me by not being terrible!  The Spielberg-isms were kept in check, and there was only one stereotype that I thought was pushed to the level of ludicrousness.

I'd have given it a B it they hadn't recycled the kid with divorcing parents trope.

B-

[Reply #236 on:]

Not only did they do that trope, but it seemed completely pointless in the context of the plot. The kids never experienced any kind of character arc or development dealing with the divorce, it was just kind of an element that was introduced and never resolved or affected the proceedings in any way.

But ya, the movie was fun enough to at least partially make up for stuff like that.

[Reply #237 on:]

The Way he Looks

Beautiful movie. Absolutely beautiful. A sweet coming of age Brazilian film that centers on a blind teenager, Leo, who basically just wants to be a normal kid like everyone else and be treated the same way. This doesn't come easy however due to his overprotective mother, and when a love triangle brews between his best friend Giovana and the "new kid in town", Gabriel, complications arise regarding friendship and young love.... dun dun DUNN!!
Seriously though, it's such a fun and tender film. Watched it once myself then a second time with my mother, who also enjoyed it. Highly recommend it if you're looking for a good drama/romance film.

A+

I also fell in love with this song from it.

[Reply #238 on:]

The Martian

Saw this tonight after the company holiday party.  It was the 9:55PM showing and there were only about 15-20 people in the entire theatre, and I had a perfect seat.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of actual space operations will cringe the first time they see airlocks operated, but given that it's a necessary device to keep the pace up it was forgiveable and didn't really get in the way.   This is a human film, not a space film -- an analogue of sorts to a certain Tom Hanks movie.

It was fun.  It was funny at times.  It was touching.  It was human.  It was an enjoyable film.

B

[Reply #239 on:]

I just watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day for the first time.

Fantastic movie. The CGI and practical effects have aged far better than the original film and it had a really compelling story with such brilliant set-pieces.

Only real downside was the actor playing John was kind of shitty every now and then, but I can look the other way for that since everything else is so stellar.