Movie review rant 2015

[nanoboy]

Thanks for the review. I have it in my Netflix cue and will give it a try.

I highly recommend it. The first 20mins is slow, but as soon as (and this will not be a spoiler) the militia comes to the village, the action and tension do not let up. Oh, and I see a couple typos in my previous post - I obviously referred to the Nicolas Cage 'Lord of War' (not 'Ward') film.

Idris's African accent is awesome! "Dis eez not ah child. Does he have a hend to hold a gorn? Does he have a feengah to pool a treeggah? Dis eez ah sole-deer!"

 

[nanoboy]

I saw a neat movie the other night, The Man From Earth from 2007. It is a low-budget non-action movie filmed entirely with eight main cast members, three more actors who basically just walk on and off again, one living room, and a patch of ground around a parked car.

One of the cast is the guy who played Dr. Phlox on Star Trek: Enterprise and (to my total surprise when I was just checking IMDB) another is William Katt who was The Greatest American Hero!! Turns out William Katt has done tonnes of roles all over the place in tv and movies. Who knew.

The plot is that at a going-away party the person leaving decides to reveal to his friends that he never dies or ages, and that he is now around 14,000 years old. The entire movie is talking, with the main character telling his story and his friends questioning him, believing him, disbelieving him.

There are no car chases or explosions or beheadings or transforming robots. It is not a good movie for nanoboy.

I give it, let's say.... seven out of ten.

I read the review and the sentence in bold and thought, "this is not a good movie for me". It sounds like a stage play, only cheaper.

 

[Chlidonias]

I just finished watching Primer, a time-travel movie from 2004 which was made for $7000. I think nanoboy would last through about three minutes of this movie before going and inventing his own time travel machine just so he could go back in time and tell himself to watch Transformers instead.

For everyone else this is a good, but slow and talky, movie. I ended it thinking "did I even understand that at all?" so I did some googling, found some explanations of the plot, and discovered that I had actually understood it perfectly well apart for a couple of bits I hadn't been paying attention to.

There's a play-school walk-through in this video, but if you haven't watched the movie you probably won't have the patience to sit through it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUzy-xPf0MI

 

[nanoboy]

I just finished watching Primer, a time-travel movie from 2004 which was made for $7000. I think nanoboy would last through about three minutes of this movie before going and inventing his own time travel machine just so he could go back in time and tell himself to watch Transformers instead.

For everyone else this is a good, but slow and talky, movie. I ended it thinking "did I even understand that at all?" so I did some googling, found some explanations of the plot, and discovered that I had actually understood it perfectly well apart for a couple of bits I hadn't been paying attention to.

There's a play-school walk-through in this video, but if you haven't watched the movie you probably won't have the patience to sit through it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUzy-xPf0MI

$7,000?? Is it a school play, filmed with a camcorder? I only watch movies that cost over $100m to make, I'm afraid.

On a slightly related note, I read somewhere that the new Star Wars film will need to bring in more than $1.5b at the box office to be considered a commercial success...

 

[Hix]

$7,000?? Is it a school play, filmed with a camcorder? I only watch movies that cost over $100m to make, I'm afraid.

On a slightly related note, I read somewhere that the new Star Wars film will need to bring in more than $1.5b at the box office to be considered a commercial success...

Jurassic World has grossed over $1.6b, and Fast & Furious 7 just over $1.5b, so it shouldn't be a hard target for Star Wars to beat.



Hix

 

[nanoboy]

Jurassic World has grossed over $1.6b, and Fast & Furious 7 just over $1.5b, so it shouldn't be a hard target for Star Wars to beat.



Hix

Well, when you put it like that, I guess they will rack that up by mid-2016 then.

 

[Gulo gulo]

On a slightly related note, I read somewhere that the new Star Wars film will need to bring in more than $1.5b at the box office to be considered a commercial success...

Episode VII will surpass 1.5b at the box office, with ease. All the fan boys & gals will pack theaters well into next year. Everyone will want to see Ben Solo kill his father. Fans want to know the mystery about Luke, only to find out he doesn't have any dialogue in the whole film!

 

[Batto]

Everyone will want to see Ben Solo kill his father. Fans want to know the mystery about Luke, only to find out he doesn't have any dialogue in the whole film!

http://replycandy.com/wp-content/uploads/Yoda-What-You-Did-There-See-It-I-Do.jpg

 

[Chlidonias]

Sinbad of the Seven Seas

A stunningly-bad but awfully-fun movie released in 1989 (but filmed in 1983...), where Sinbad is played by legendary bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno. For those not fortunate enough to be old, Lou Ferrigno made his acting name playing The Incredible Hulk on tv in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (Fun fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger auditioned to play the role but he wasn't tall enough - he is 6'2 whereas Ferrigno is 6'5 - which was just as well for Schwarzenegger or he probably wouldn't have got to where he is today).

The movie starts out in the beautiful city of Basra (which is in what is now Iraq, so insert your own topical humour here ), where the evil Jaffar has captured the Princess Alina and flung the city's magic stones to the four corners of the world using black magic. Sinbad has to retrieve them and return to save the Princess. He is joined on his quest by his loyal companions - a Viking, a Prince, a Bald Cook, a Dwarf named Poochie, and a Chinese Soldier Of Fortune. I am not making any of that up - those are their actual descriptions used in the narration. In the credits the "Chinese Soldier Of Fortune" is called "the Samurai" and is played by Japanese actor Hal Yamanouchi, who of course you will recall as the older Hashida in 2013's The Wolverine where he battled Wolverine inside a giant Samurai robot. The crew first defeat a giant rock monster thing, before visiting an island of strippers, then an island of empty suits of armour, and finally Sinbad fights a slime monster which can shoot laser beams from its hands. What?

The movie is sort of like Conan The Barbarian meets Flash Gordon, with synthesizer keyboard music (it was the 1980s after all), horrible acting, and horrendous dialogue. It is literally like they had no script and just filmed whatever words first came out of the actors' mouths. The evil Jaffar is played by John Steiner and he is absolutely brilliant, so far over the top that he has descended into the next valley already.

Definitely watch this movie - it is so bad it is good.

 

[Chlidonias]

Equilibrium (2002)
A somewhat bland yet Matrixy sci-fi movie starring Christian Bale, set in a future where emotions are suppressed with compulsory drug-taking and free-thinkers are summarily executed. I had actually already seen this a couple of years ago but it is so unremarkable and utterly-forgettable that I didn't realise until I was already watching it. Even then I only had a vague sort of recollection of the events as they unfolded. In a week I'll have forgotten it again, and so the cycle will continue.
3 out of 10


Infini (2015)
Another sci-fi movie, this one with a confused start and quite a bit of meaningless content, but the claustrophobic Aliens feel to it meant that I quite liked this movie despite its ordinary plot (alien planet, humans go mad and start killing each other, alien organisms are to blame). The reviews online are generally not good however. Reading those reviews afterwards I realised I completely misunderstood the ending - or perhaps I was the only one who got it.
6 out of 10


Kung Fu Killer (aka Kung Fu Jungle) (2014)
A Hong Kong martial arts movie starring Donnie Yen, where he has to track down a ... well, a Kung Fu killer, I guess, who is killing all the top martial artists in fights to the death. It really is much better than that makes it sound. There's a whole storyline in there, so it isn't just a random series of fights like many Hong Kong movies where they are making it up as they go along.
7 out of 10


The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino's latest film, and you get the usual - lots of talking, things that seem meaningless but aren't, things that seem meaningless and are, graphic-novel violence, gallons of blood, Samuel L. Jackson. I'm not a fan of all Tarantino movies, but this one was very cool. The scenic shots are great; there aren't many snow-bound Westerns around! The only sour note for me was the inclusion of Channing Tatum who was completely out of place both in terms of the other actors and the setting. Fortunately he was only in it for a short period near the end.
8 out of 10

 

[Chlidonias]

Spectre

The latest James Bond film. This was actually a real let-down. Too long by about an hour, and the impression it gave me was basically just being pieced together from parts of the other Daniel Craig Bond films. Overall I thought it was really pretty boring. Even the actors all seemed bored. One car chase went on so long with nothing happening (despite it being, you know, a car chase!) that you may as well have just taken a nap for a while and you wouldn't have missed a thing. They also seem to have gone back to the style of the very first Bond movies from the 60s where Bond was less a seducer of women and more of an outright rapist.

There were plot-holes and -conveniences everywhere, stupid set-ups for lame action pieces, things that just made you go "whaaa?" and "buh?" and "yeah, but..."

I did really like the crater of the extinct volcano which Blofeld was using as his secret base (er, he apparently hasn't heard of cameras on satellites) - I googled it and it is just outside Erfoud in Morocco. It looked very cool. And I liked the new Bond Girl, Lea Seydoux, who looks like an angry Scarlett Johansson. She didn't die but I doubt she'll be back.

5 out of 10

 

[Hix]

Spectre

And I liked the new Bond Girl, Lea Seydoux, who looks like an angry Scarlett Johansson. She didn't die but I doubt she'll be back.

I got the impression Bond wouldn't be back. And Daniel Craig has said he doesn't want to do another.



Hix

 

[Chlidonias]

RoboCop (2014)

I'm pretty sure Hix talked about this movie when it came out, but searching for Robocop came up empty. Anyway, I just watched it and it isn't bad at all. Not as good as the original 1987 RoboCop of course, but certainly a hundred times better than the 2012 remake of Judge Dredd turned out.

Although I thought the movie was quite good it lost (entirely) all the sarcasm and parody of the original, just becoming a straight-faced humourless action movie. Patrick Garrow's spineless Antoine Vallon character is not a patch on Kurtwood Smith's Clarence J. Boddicker, and there are some really strange choices of actor like Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton.

There were nice nods to the original (cop car scraping the ramp bottom, for example) but equally many ham-fisted ones - having versions of ED-209 everywhere you look just cheapens how awesome ED-209 was, and the phrase "dead or alive, you're coming with me" as used at the end had literally no relation to anything else from the movie, serving only to remind you that this was the lesser of the two movies.

As an action movie I'd give it maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10.
Compared to the original RoboCop I'd give it a 4.

 

[Hix]

I don't think I saw it. I may have done and forgotten, but I don't think I did.

And for Nanoboy: as of Christmas Day, Star Wars: The Force Awakens had grossed around $545 million in the USA alone, so well on track to the $1.5b goal.



Hix

 

[Chlidonias]

I don't think I saw it. I may have done and forgotten, but I don't think I did.

hmm. I recall you making a comment on how the armour was black in the remake instead of silver, but perhaps you were just discussing the trailer.

Anyway, I forgot to put my Schwarzenegger Fun Fact into my review. Whereas Arnold missed out on the Incredible Hulk tv role because he wasn't big enough, he didn't get the 1987 RoboCop role for the opposite reason - he was too big. They felt that adding the armour over top of his muscles would be impossible without making him look like the Michelin Man.

 

[Hix]

hmm. I recall you making a comment on how the armour was black in the remake instead of silver, but perhaps you were just discussing the trailer.

That's definitely not me, then. I wouldn't care about something like that. Not for Robocop.

And I've just gone back through my records and I definitely didn't see that movie:

16 Jan 2014 Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
13 Feb 2014 Last Vegas
21 Feb 2014 Lone Survivor
27 Feb 2014 Non-Stop
04 Mar 2014 3 Days To Kill
16 Mar 2014 The Monuments Men
29 Apr 2014 The Other Woman
10 Jun 2014 Edge Of Tomorrow
26 Jun 2014 Blended
16 Jul 2014 Sex Tape
02 Aug 2014 Lucy
22 Aug 2014 The Expendables 3
24 Oct 2014 The Equalizer
04 Nov 2014 John Wick
17 Dec 2014 Interstellar



Hix

 

[Chlidonias]

That's definitely not me, then. I wouldn't care about something like that. Not for Robocop.

I wonder who it was then. Maybe it was just a dream. It's not weird to dream about Zoochat posts is it?

 

[Batto]

(...) but certainly a hundred times better than the 2012 remake of Judge Dredd turned out.

I beg to differ; "Dredd" was in fact so much better than the Stallone movie that it makes one break out into song: [ame]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZrsJsvL30g[/ame]

 

[Chlidonias]

ahaha, very good. I am going to rewatch Stallone's Judge Dredd and see how it fairs. I haven't watched it for a very long time so it will be interesting. However I shall definitely not subject myself to a rewatch of the remake.

 

[Chlidonias]

oooh-kay, so I have watched Judge Dredd again. For the first fifteen minutes I was thinking "Dear God, this is Judge Dredd?!?" It was embarrassingly corny, even for a cartoon-based action movie, and somehow I had completely obliterated from my mind that Rob "Why Do I Even Exist" Schneider was in the film. And I don't mean just in passing either - he opens the movie, as if he is the most important character there is. Why the heck would anybody give Judge Dredd a comedy sidekick? Every minute he is in the film he just destroys the tone entirely, and his buddying-up with Dredd is painfully forced.

Fortunately, despite Schneider's presence, the movie picks up nicely after its shaky start and as soon as Rico appears everything becomes much more serious and awesome in the way that only 80s and 90s big action movies can be. Diane Lane is gorgeous as Judge Hershey, Armand Assante is show-stealing as the evil Rico, there is a fantastic Arnold-bot, and a family of hillbilly cannibals. What's not to like?

Unexpected highlight: Darth Vader doing the voice-over at the beginning of the movie.

Lowlight: the terrible green-screen attempt for the flying motorbike chase. I mean just really really terrible, like it was done by a pre-schooler scrapbooking in her bedroom.




{Note from mods - thread continues here: Movie review rant 2016}