Last Movie You Watched

[SonicMan46]

Man of Steel (2013) w/ Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, et al - streamed from my cable tonight - was on my 'to watch list' but was not expecting much from the reviews, e.g. 2+*(of 4*) in my local paper; 3+*/5* on Amazon; RottenTomatoes, 56% from critics (75% from audience) - the Amazon curve of reviews is quite broad - for myself, I'd not go more than 3* (maybe 1/2 less) - absolutely TOO much CGI destruction - no relationships developed, no clever dialogue, no memorable characters - recommended only for those into current (and utterly boring) CGI w/ noise & explosions - Dave

[TheGSMoeller]

Man of Steel (2013) w/ Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, et al - streamed from my cable tonight - was on my 'to watch list' but was not expecting much from the reviews, e.g. 2+*(of 4*) in my local paper; 3+*/5* on Amazon; RottenTomatoes, 56% from critics (75% from audience) - the Amazon curve of reviews is quite broad - for myself, I'd not go more than 3* (maybe 1/2 less) - absolutely TOO much CGI destruction - no relationships developed, no clever dialogue, no memorable characters - recommended only for those into current (and utterly boring) CGI w/ noise & explosions - Dave

Dave, you may get a kick out of this "Honest Trailer" for Man of Steel.

WARNING: Major Spoliers...and possibly NSFW.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Sge5sUNJkiY

[SonicMan46]

Dave, you may get a kick out of this "Honest Trailer" for Man of Steel.

WARNING: Major Spoliers...and possibly NSFW.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Sge5sUNJkiY

Hi Greg - LMAO!  over that link - never watched that guy but he was funny - felt like I could have written the review!  Highly recommended to those who have not seen this film but may?  Dave

[TheGSMoeller]

Hi Greg - LMAO!  over that link - never watched that guy but he was funny - felt like I could have written the review!  Highly recommended to those who have not seen this film but may?  Dave

There's a whole series of these "Honest Trailers", most of then are spot on.
Glad you enjoyed it!

[Karl Henning]

While I was a-vacationing, my brother put me onto Everything Wrong With . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/v/8LDhsH79jAY

[Karl Henning]

http://www.youtube.com/v/pn0LXWaPxnQ

[SonicMan46]

There's a whole series of these "Honest Trailers", most of then are spot on.
Glad you enjoyed it!

My son use to watch Mystery Science Theater w/ Joel & the robots - I probably saw a dozen w/ him and we did laugh - worth a search (if available) for those who like spoofing bad Sci-Fi films -    Dave

[lisa needs braces]

Everything that's wrong with The Hobbit probably has to do with the fact that Peter Jackson and the studio behind him have stretched a children's book that was shorter than any of the LOTR books into another film trilogy. They probably could have made one decent epic out of the material. But three?  Sheesh.

[TheGSMoeller]

The trailer for the film "NOAH" from filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has been released. Accuracies and controversy aside, I expect quite a spectacle coming from Aronofsky...

NOAH

[Todd]

Accuracies and controversy aside, I expect quite a spectacle coming from Aronofsky...

I would hope no one attends an Aronofsky film based on a biblical story with hopes of accuracy.  I mean, wouldn't the actors have to be close to a foot shorter?

Anyway, I look forward to this bad boy, even if critics dislike it, like many did with The Fountain, which you know is so good.

[kishnevi]

Watched this earlier this evening,  after buying it on a whim in the used CD store for $1.99.   Certainly worth more than that.
[asin]B0013FZUQK[/asin]

Definitely geared for pubescent American males, with kung fu action mixed with fantasy based on Chinese mythos and a tenous link to modern America.   The fantasy portion and the switch thereto are well integrated, the CGI effects are used to augment the fantasy element and not the martial arts element (which is in fact relatively restrained compared to many actual Chinese films), and the more you are familiar with the Chinese novel known in English speaking countries as Journey to the West or, in the Arthur Waley abridgment/translation,  Monkey,  the better, since many details of the fantasy (other than the two villians) are actually derived from there.   There's a nice fight sequence between Chan and Li, who appear in more than one role in this movie (although makeup may make it hard to realize that until the final reveals).  It is in fact the modern American sequences that bookend the movie which are hardest to believe.  They take place in what is apparently a mix of Boston's Chinatown and South Boston,  with a gang of hoodlums running around who are possibly Italian but definitely neither Irish nor Chinese, and the fact that in the real world the hero (at the beginning, a classic weakling who geeks out on Chinese martial art films) would be facing hard time for assisting an armed robbery is not even referred to, much less explained away.  And the fantasy portion doesn't run away with itself--the American hero (Michael Angarano, whom I've otherwise never heard of) gets some intensive training in kung fu, enough to deal with associated minions of the villian, but the serious fighting is done by Jet Li, Chan, and Li Bang Bang, who plays the mandatory heroic female, after the hero gets his rear end handed to him by the female villianess.    Chan plays a Drunken Master sort of character, so the comedy American audiences often associate with him comes in that way, along with a couple of witticisms that deserve to be in a better movie.

[ibanezmonster]

Neat stuff. Very different from some other stuff by the director.

Someone recommended me this after I explained Attack on Titan's plot to them, but... this is a fun, entertaining Hollywood movie while Attack on Titan is a work of art. Quite a difference.

[Florestan]

Making the world safe for democracy American interests began much earlier than the reign presidency of G. W. Bush.. 

[Todd]

The Heat.  An utterly predictable, formulaic, but moderately enjoyable buddy picture.

[Bogey]

My all time guilty pleasure.  Love the whole thing.  Reminds me of all those Saturday matinee serials they used to show, but in color.  And yes, I own this version of it.

[Wakefield]

The Heat.  An utterly predictable, formulaic, but moderately enjoyable buddy picture.

"Good cop. Mad cop."

These ladies came 20 years late. The job was taken by Danny Glover and Mel Gibson.

[Octave]

SAMURAI SPY [IBUN SARUTOBI SASUKE] (Masahiro Shinoda, 1965)
Excellent....highly recommended maybe even if you don't have a special interest in jidaigeki/samurai/ninja/ronin/politics movies or even Japanese cinema in general.  The opening minutes can be a bit tightly packed in terms of voice-over context for the political milieu (and I watch lots of movies like this), mainly because the b&w photography throughout is often so beautiful, I found myself repeatedly distracted from the subtitles; this was a bit of a problem throughout the film, to the point where following the finer points of the story became difficult (not a big deal), but only really bothered me during the info-rich opening passage. 
Also at time it almost seemed like a 'hippie western' or spaghetti western in its (muted) politics and character psychology.

Some of the action passages (and action isn't really the only thing in this film) briefly looked like they were 'inventing' anime; I know this isn't true, but it's remarkable to see, even though I am not yet a fan of anime.  I liked the sense of an obsession with little complexes of movement-against-movement and sliding surfaces and textures, which took priority over the grandiose posing and posturing that bugs me so much in anime, and which has apparently found its way out of anime and into Western cinema, shorn of the more abstract aspects of anime and Japanese cinema's elastic space-time contortions.  (I'm actually insecure about this judgment, as it's just a raw but insistent impression, blunted by my illiteracy in anime and in Japanese theater traditions.) 

SAMURAI SPY is also rather remarkably violent for its day, it seems to me; nothing compared to what we're now accustomed to, but still.  Shurikens ablaze!

An interesting score by Toru Takemitsu---he worked on a bunch of Shinoda's pictures---though the earliest moments can be a little loopy, e.g. a balder-than-even-usual Debussy gloss suddenly becomes some funky flute jazz, before settling into something more evocative and spooky for the remainder.

Here's a 4+ part blog post with a number of stills (some ripped off by me, here) and a little discussion of the film (advance to each new part with the 'next post' link at bottom of each post):
http://vintageninja.net/?p=1609

[George]

"Good cop. Mad cop."

These ladies came 20 years late. The job was taken by Danny Glover and Mel Gibson.

There is a sequel in the works. I thought the original was Ok.

[Todd]

Transformers vs Godzilla, er, Pacific Rim.  Visually impressive, but the story is really weak, and the dialogue seems almost like it was written by a random text generator.  I shall not be watching this again, and I think I shall skip any sequels.  This makes me think that Pan's Labyrinth may be the exception among Del Toro's work, the one good movie he will make.

For fans of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, this could be subtitled "Charlie bridges a Kaiju".

[Artem]

In case someone could've missed it, but there a sale at B&N on Criterion DVDs: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray-Disc-DVD-Special-Editions/379003202

You can get some great films for half the price.