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Glad to see that I'm not just exchanging recommendations with nanoboy and Chli...
Movie review rant 2016
- Thread starter nanoboy
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Glad to see that I'm not just exchanging recommendations with nanoboy and Chli...
I keep up with this thread from a distance because taste in movies can be so controversial but I have to disagree with this. This movie was embarrassing compared to the first movie; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Action packed: yes. Gripping: no. I loved the first instalment but this sequel really didn't have enough story to back it up. Pretty to look at, yet predictable and drawn out.
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
If you liked White House Down then you enjoy Olympus Has Fallen. I'm looking forward to seeing the sequel London Has Fallen when it appears at Christmas Island Open Air Cinema some time in the not too distant future.
Hix
Oh yeah? I'll keep an eye out for those movies then. I'll have to make do with watching them in a room on a television though...
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
The lead actress is easy on the eyes and an Aussie - that's good enough for me right there!!
I was dreading watching the movie in English, expecting it to be dubbed, but they actually spoke English with an almost British accent!! When I tried the Mandarin version, it was still the English version but dubbed in Mandarin!
Extraction
If you watch the trailer for this it looks like it is going to be a Bruce Willis movie. It is not. In the few scenes Bruce is in he is either sitting down, standing in one spot, or lying on the floor. The only exception is where he is walking along a corridor talking on a phone. Is Bruce getting too old for action movies? Perhaps.
However Bruce wasn't the reason I watched it, because this is really Gina Carano's movie. She still isn't that great of an actress yet, but she is an amazing fighter and the action scenes are filmed in ways that actually show this (unlike many recent movies where there are so many cuts and close-ups that you can't tell what is going on).
Oh, sharing the movie with Gina Carano is Kellan Lutz. I think he is supposed to be the main lead. I didn't think much of this guy in Expendables 3 but he does pretty well in this movie.
The basic plot is that Bruce Willis is a retired CIA agent kidnapped by terrorists. His son Kellan Lutz is also CIA (office CIA not field-agent CIA) who goes renegade to get him back (or "extract him" - see, the movie title). Gina Carano is another CIA agent assigned to stop Kellan and bring him back but instead they team up to rescue Bruce. Then there's all the usual subterfuge and double-crossing and so forth. There's not really anything new in this movie, it is fairly standard fare, but it is certainly watchable. I really like Gina Carano though, so I may be biased.
In The Blood
Another Gina Carano movie, and in this one she actually gets to do some acting alongside the fighting (still not the best at acting, but I would love her to become a big action name). Her character was raised to be an emotionless warrior by an abusive father... for some reason. It is only explained through flashbacks to her teenage years which give no hint to the purpose of it. It is basically her father beating her up and teaching her to fight and telling her she only has herself to look after her. Why? Who knows. I'm guessing the writers couldn't think of any other way for her to be able to beat up anyone in the world without going down the usual route of having it be due to "ex-special forces", "ex-ninja" or "ex-assassin".
So Gina grows up all confused and lethal, but eventually she meets a nice guy at a substance-abuse councilling session and they get engaged. For their honeymoon they make the classic mistake of going to the Caribbean where (obviously! Doi!) they get into a fight at a club with the island's gangland kingpin. Gina wipes the floor with everybody within a six mile radius, then they go back to their house to sleep it off. The next day they go zip-lining. In a scene the island's tourism department obviously didn't read when reviewing the script, there's a mishap and Gina's husband falls a hundred-odd feet into the jungle below, fortunately suffering no more than a couple of snapped legs. An ambulance arrives but he never makes it to the hospital - he just vanishes en route, with no record of the ambulance ever existing, leaving Gina in line as a prime suspect in his disappearance. Of course the local gang and crooked cops are involved, and so Gina has to murder her way through the island's population to get him back alive.
There are a fair number of distracting plot holes which I think you would pick up with even a casual viewing, but overall the movie is really quite good. The fight scenes are well done (again, actually allowing Gina to show her fighting skills), the acting is generally adequate, it has Danny Trejo in it. The title is pretty dumb though. It sounds more like a Van Damme style kickboxer movie.
I haven't seen Deadpool and I'm really torn over it. On the one hand it has Gina Carano in it so that's a huge plus, but on the other it has Ryan Reynolds and that is a huge minus. Does one cancel the other out? Can I find an edit which only has the Gina Carano bits in it and none of the Ryan Reynolds bits? How does Ryan Reynolds even get to make action movies anyway?
If you watch the trailer for this it looks like it is going to be a Bruce Willis movie. It is not. In the few scenes Bruce is in he is either sitting down, standing in one spot, or lying on the floor. The only exception is where he is walking along a corridor talking on a phone. Is Bruce getting too old for action movies? Perhaps.
However Bruce wasn't the reason I watched it, because this is really Gina Carano's movie. She still isn't that great of an actress yet, but she is an amazing fighter and the action scenes are filmed in ways that actually show this (unlike many recent movies where there are so many cuts and close-ups that you can't tell what is going on).
Oh, sharing the movie with Gina Carano is Kellan Lutz. I think he is supposed to be the main lead. I didn't think much of this guy in Expendables 3 but he does pretty well in this movie.
The basic plot is that Bruce Willis is a retired CIA agent kidnapped by terrorists. His son Kellan Lutz is also CIA (office CIA not field-agent CIA) who goes renegade to get him back (or "extract him" - see, the movie title). Gina Carano is another CIA agent assigned to stop Kellan and bring him back but instead they team up to rescue Bruce. Then there's all the usual subterfuge and double-crossing and so forth. There's not really anything new in this movie, it is fairly standard fare, but it is certainly watchable. I really like Gina Carano though, so I may be biased.
In The Blood
Another Gina Carano movie, and in this one she actually gets to do some acting alongside the fighting (still not the best at acting, but I would love her to become a big action name). Her character was raised to be an emotionless warrior by an abusive father... for some reason. It is only explained through flashbacks to her teenage years which give no hint to the purpose of it. It is basically her father beating her up and teaching her to fight and telling her she only has herself to look after her. Why? Who knows. I'm guessing the writers couldn't think of any other way for her to be able to beat up anyone in the world without going down the usual route of having it be due to "ex-special forces", "ex-ninja" or "ex-assassin".
So Gina grows up all confused and lethal, but eventually she meets a nice guy at a substance-abuse councilling session and they get engaged. For their honeymoon they make the classic mistake of going to the Caribbean where (obviously! Doi!) they get into a fight at a club with the island's gangland kingpin. Gina wipes the floor with everybody within a six mile radius, then they go back to their house to sleep it off. The next day they go zip-lining. In a scene the island's tourism department obviously didn't read when reviewing the script, there's a mishap and Gina's husband falls a hundred-odd feet into the jungle below, fortunately suffering no more than a couple of snapped legs. An ambulance arrives but he never makes it to the hospital - he just vanishes en route, with no record of the ambulance ever existing, leaving Gina in line as a prime suspect in his disappearance. Of course the local gang and crooked cops are involved, and so Gina has to murder her way through the island's population to get him back alive.
There are a fair number of distracting plot holes which I think you would pick up with even a casual viewing, but overall the movie is really quite good. The fight scenes are well done (again, actually allowing Gina to show her fighting skills), the acting is generally adequate, it has Danny Trejo in it. The title is pretty dumb though. It sounds more like a Van Damme style kickboxer movie.
I haven't seen Deadpool and I'm really torn over it. On the one hand it has Gina Carano in it so that's a huge plus, but on the other it has Ryan Reynolds and that is a huge minus. Does one cancel the other out? Can I find an edit which only has the Gina Carano bits in it and none of the Ryan Reynolds bits? How does Ryan Reynolds even get to make action movies anyway?
There's actually a part in the movie in which you can see her bits (kinda)-maybe that's the feather that brakes the balance pro watching Deadpool, allowing you to ogle your crush?
As for your final question: because the Deadpool comics actually referenced to him as the ideal actor for DP?
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Other pros for the movie include the fact Reynolds is wearing a mask most of the time, it also has Morena Baccarin in it (and a glimpse of her naked), and the script is brilliant. It's worth seeing for the script alone. There's even a line in it (delivered by Reynolds) questioning how Ryan Reynolds has made it this far in the industry with his acting skills.
I loved it and I think you should give it a go. You can always walk out if you can't handle. Remember, as I always say: To try and fail is yet to learn, to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable cost of what might have been.
Hix
Just got home from watching Deadpool myself and I have to say it's quite hilarious as well as having a solid story, though I feel most of it is told in the trailers. There's quite a lot of fun made of both Ryan Reynolds and the last movie incarnation of the character. The fourth-wall breaking is quite well done and the soundtrack (including the Deadpool Song written for the movie) is spot on. The intro credits themselves won me over within the first five seconds and the end credit scene is pretty rewarding.
I'd give it an 8.5-9/10 and would definitely recommend it!
~Thylo
I'd give it an 8.5-9/10 and would definitely recommend it!
~Thylo
Haywire
My third Gina Carano movie over the last few days. In fact this was her first lead role (and only second movie after a bit part in Blood And Bone, which I'm not going to bother watching). Haywire is an action-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh where Gina plays an ex-marine doing covert contract work for the government - spying, rescue, assassination, all the stuff that I thought the CIA did, but what do I know. Naturally she gets double-crossed and has to go on a murder-filled rampage to clear her name. It's a pretty ordinary thriller, trying to look all arty with the camera angles and dialogue, and it has some questionable plot developments, but otherwise it's perfectly serviceable as a movie and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. The fight scenes unfortunately are few and far between, although there are lots of scenes of Gina re-enacting Run Lola Run if that is any consolation. All sorts of well-known people pop up throughout the movie, which I gather is a Soderbergh thing; people like Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas and Ewan MacGregor. For some reason Gina's entire dialogue was redubbed in someone else's voice. The original title of the movie was Knockout which makes no sense - just like Haywire. It's almost as if movie studios just throw darts at wall-charts of random action-sounding words and say "yes, that's perfect for a title!"
My third Gina Carano movie over the last few days. In fact this was her first lead role (and only second movie after a bit part in Blood And Bone, which I'm not going to bother watching). Haywire is an action-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh where Gina plays an ex-marine doing covert contract work for the government - spying, rescue, assassination, all the stuff that I thought the CIA did, but what do I know. Naturally she gets double-crossed and has to go on a murder-filled rampage to clear her name. It's a pretty ordinary thriller, trying to look all arty with the camera angles and dialogue, and it has some questionable plot developments, but otherwise it's perfectly serviceable as a movie and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. The fight scenes unfortunately are few and far between, although there are lots of scenes of Gina re-enacting Run Lola Run if that is any consolation. All sorts of well-known people pop up throughout the movie, which I gather is a Soderbergh thing; people like Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas and Ewan MacGregor. For some reason Gina's entire dialogue was redubbed in someone else's voice. The original title of the movie was Knockout which makes no sense - just like Haywire. It's almost as if movie studios just throw darts at wall-charts of random action-sounding words and say "yes, that's perfect for a title!"
Samurai Cop
Oh, Samurai Cop. What a movie. This 1990 Lethal Weapon rip-off is so awful that it was never actually released as a movie. The story goes that after it was finished the VHS tape was locked up and forgotten in a storage locker where it remained for years until accidentally discovered and distributed. The movie is so awful that the lead actor quit acting and changed his name so everybody thought he was dead. This movie is so awful that it has actually changed the fundamentals of the Universe and become good. Seriously, this is one laugh-all-day-long movie that I could watch over and over again.
The entire movie appears to have been shot on one of those huge home-video cameras from the '80s, and literally every shot was done in one take no matter how bad the lines were read or what the actors were doing. The lead actor cut his long hair after being told that filming was done, only to find out a few weeks later that in fact half the movie still needed to be shot so he had to wear a very obvious woman's wig instead. All the close-ups were shot in an office months after the action scenes and the actors had no idea what scenes they were recording for, so the spliced-together sequences make no sense. The lead actor was so over it by this time that he deliberately read his lines as woodenly as possible, hoping they wouldn't be used - but they were. The director had no clue about lighting, editing, dubbing, anything at all really, and the scenes jump abruptly from, say, chase scenes to soft-core ****. The entire movie is hilarious.
The plot is that a white cop played by Matt Hannon (the Mel Gibson stand-in) and black cop played by Mark Frazer (Danny Glover stand-in) have to bust a cocaine-dealing Japanese gang called the Katana Gang. By my count there were approximately two Japanese members in this gang - all the rest are white, hispanic, dustmen, vagrants, just whoever the director could find walking past the set I guess. And... well, actually that's the whole plot. The title comes from the white cop having been trained in Japan and being fluent in Japanese, despite the obvious failings of his abilities in speaking Japanese and the lack of sword fights in the movie (there is one brief one at the end).
I can't recommend this movie enough. There are a number of clips on youtube to give you a taste of what you're in store for. Ten out of ten (by which I mean zero out of ten).
Oh, Samurai Cop. What a movie. This 1990 Lethal Weapon rip-off is so awful that it was never actually released as a movie. The story goes that after it was finished the VHS tape was locked up and forgotten in a storage locker where it remained for years until accidentally discovered and distributed. The movie is so awful that the lead actor quit acting and changed his name so everybody thought he was dead. This movie is so awful that it has actually changed the fundamentals of the Universe and become good. Seriously, this is one laugh-all-day-long movie that I could watch over and over again.
The entire movie appears to have been shot on one of those huge home-video cameras from the '80s, and literally every shot was done in one take no matter how bad the lines were read or what the actors were doing. The lead actor cut his long hair after being told that filming was done, only to find out a few weeks later that in fact half the movie still needed to be shot so he had to wear a very obvious woman's wig instead. All the close-ups were shot in an office months after the action scenes and the actors had no idea what scenes they were recording for, so the spliced-together sequences make no sense. The lead actor was so over it by this time that he deliberately read his lines as woodenly as possible, hoping they wouldn't be used - but they were. The director had no clue about lighting, editing, dubbing, anything at all really, and the scenes jump abruptly from, say, chase scenes to soft-core ****. The entire movie is hilarious.
The plot is that a white cop played by Matt Hannon (the Mel Gibson stand-in) and black cop played by Mark Frazer (Danny Glover stand-in) have to bust a cocaine-dealing Japanese gang called the Katana Gang. By my count there were approximately two Japanese members in this gang - all the rest are white, hispanic, dustmen, vagrants, just whoever the director could find walking past the set I guess. And... well, actually that's the whole plot. The title comes from the white cop having been trained in Japan and being fluent in Japanese, despite the obvious failings of his abilities in speaking Japanese and the lack of sword fights in the movie (there is one brief one at the end).
I can't recommend this movie enough. There are a number of clips on youtube to give you a taste of what you're in store for. Ten out of ten (by which I mean zero out of ten).
Birdemic: Shock And Terror and Birdemic 2: The Resurrection
Birdemic gives a whole new meaning to "bad movie". It is the kind of movie which is so bad that for the whole viewing you are wondering if a person could actually create such a horror by accident or if it is just some elaborate joke. Sadly it is no joke. I've watched quite a few "behind the scenes" clips and interviews with the cast (well, really just with Whitney Moore because hot girl), and the poor deluded director really was so incompetent that he thought he had made an amazing Hitchcockian thriller. The movie was mostly filmed on weekends, and the cast ended up treating it just as acting experience thinking it would never ever see the light of day (it was the first movie for all the actors - but, scarily, not the director's!).
The many many many problems with the movie are similar to those exhibited by Samurai Cop but with some important additions, the most obvious being that all the sound was recorded solely by the camera's in-built microphone, meaning a lot of audio is drowned out by background noise like the ocean or wind. Nothing was re-recorded and dubbed in, and very few scenes seem to have been filmed in more than a single take. Also noticeable is the way every individual shot is too long (e.g. the awkward pause after a sentence is spoken where the actor is waiting for the director to say cut), and instead of the extraneous bits being cut they are just left there, presumably to pad the running time.
And then there's the CGI. Dear god, the CGI. At least Samurai Cop was spared this. The birds in the movie are two-dimensional cut-outs of eagles and vultures superimposed on the screen, with seagull noises, while the cast flail limply at the air with coathangers to ward them off. When the birds are attacking they make diving-aeroplane noises and explode on impact. I'm not making that up, and it is things like that which make you think "no, surely this is a joke, no-one in their right mind would do that!" But I don't think the director is in his right mind.
The movie is described by the director as a "romantic-thriller" which he has apparently interpreted as "first half of the movie romantic, second half thriller". The first several hours (or so it feels) are spent watching the robotic hero drive around, fill the car with gas, drive some more, make a million-dollar sale over the phone (after offering a 50% discount), walk around a bit. I hope calling him robotic doesn't make him sound too exciting. It's more like someone only had a plank of wood to make their robot so just said "here's my robot, it's a plank of wood". They literally could have drawn two dots and a line on a plank of wood and it would have made a better actor than this guy. Anyway, he creepily stalks Whitney Moore (the only person from the movie I know the name of because, as said earlier, hot girl) and they go out on the most boring dates in the history of the planet, including one where they watch the movie An Inconvenient Truth (that's important). Eventually the birdemic starts, and Wood-robot and Whitney Moore have to try and survive, fortunately while in possession of a multitude of firearms. Along the way they pick up a couple of awful child actors, meet an orthologist (not my typo!) who explains that it is global warming which is causing the birds to attack humans because of all the fossil fuel being burnt and cars and bad bad humans, and also a tree-dwelling hippie who tells them the redwoods are dying because of global warming and oh my god just stop already with the messages! Then the movie ends. How does it end, you ask? The birds fly away. That's it. Nothing else.
The sequel to this piece of highly-entertaining garbage is called Birdemic 2: The Resurrection. I went into this thinking it was going to be one of those self-aware parodies of the original where the director has realised what has happened and decided to just join in on the joke. The inclusion of zombies and resurrected cavemen would have seemed to suggest that. Nope. He hadn't learned a thing. The funny thing is, everyone else except the director seems fully aware of what's going on. Well, except for Wood-robot - who knows what he's thinking, he's a blank slate. There's a new male character who genuinely looks like he is just goofing around on-camera to see how far he can go without the scene being re-shot (answer: pretty much as far as he wants). There's at least a couple of shots where Whitney Moore is visibly laughing at his antics and the scenes are left in. Even the student they hired to add in the CGI birds was messing around - several of the birds are flying around upside-down.
The sequel is much the same as the original. It takes forever for the birds to appear, instead you have to sit through awful awful scenes of tedious nothingness. Wood-robot and Whitney Moore meet up with the new guy - let's just call him New Guy - who is making a movie. Then they meet up with Whitney Moore's mom, they go to a meeting with some movie producers, they probably do other meeting-people-stuff I can't even be bothered remembering, and finally they go to the back-lots of Hollywood where the birds attack. Finally! That's when Whitney Moore remembers that her and Wood-robot were once attacked by birds. Thumbs up. This time the birds are extinct eagles and vultures coming out of the La Brea Tar Pits due to a mysterious red rain caused by global warming probably. The orthologist is there as well, because he is giving a lecture at a bird conference, and he tells the gang all about extinct eagles and vultures to their obvious intense boredom. Some cavemen come out of the tar pits too. Oh, and also some zombies crawl out of a graveyard because why not. Everybody fights off the birds with guns and karate kicks, but they have to watch out for the exploding acid. Wait, what? Finally they take shelter at a little zoo called the Wildlife Learning Center which is an actual zoo which exists! Seriously, google it. Guess how the movie ends? The birds fly away. The end.
I actually liked both these movies. They were so unbelievably bad they were totally watchable. I'm not sure I would re-watch them though.
Birdemic gives a whole new meaning to "bad movie". It is the kind of movie which is so bad that for the whole viewing you are wondering if a person could actually create such a horror by accident or if it is just some elaborate joke. Sadly it is no joke. I've watched quite a few "behind the scenes" clips and interviews with the cast (well, really just with Whitney Moore because hot girl), and the poor deluded director really was so incompetent that he thought he had made an amazing Hitchcockian thriller. The movie was mostly filmed on weekends, and the cast ended up treating it just as acting experience thinking it would never ever see the light of day (it was the first movie for all the actors - but, scarily, not the director's!).
The many many many problems with the movie are similar to those exhibited by Samurai Cop but with some important additions, the most obvious being that all the sound was recorded solely by the camera's in-built microphone, meaning a lot of audio is drowned out by background noise like the ocean or wind. Nothing was re-recorded and dubbed in, and very few scenes seem to have been filmed in more than a single take. Also noticeable is the way every individual shot is too long (e.g. the awkward pause after a sentence is spoken where the actor is waiting for the director to say cut), and instead of the extraneous bits being cut they are just left there, presumably to pad the running time.
And then there's the CGI. Dear god, the CGI. At least Samurai Cop was spared this. The birds in the movie are two-dimensional cut-outs of eagles and vultures superimposed on the screen, with seagull noises, while the cast flail limply at the air with coathangers to ward them off. When the birds are attacking they make diving-aeroplane noises and explode on impact. I'm not making that up, and it is things like that which make you think "no, surely this is a joke, no-one in their right mind would do that!" But I don't think the director is in his right mind.
The movie is described by the director as a "romantic-thriller" which he has apparently interpreted as "first half of the movie romantic, second half thriller". The first several hours (or so it feels) are spent watching the robotic hero drive around, fill the car with gas, drive some more, make a million-dollar sale over the phone (after offering a 50% discount), walk around a bit. I hope calling him robotic doesn't make him sound too exciting. It's more like someone only had a plank of wood to make their robot so just said "here's my robot, it's a plank of wood". They literally could have drawn two dots and a line on a plank of wood and it would have made a better actor than this guy. Anyway, he creepily stalks Whitney Moore (the only person from the movie I know the name of because, as said earlier, hot girl) and they go out on the most boring dates in the history of the planet, including one where they watch the movie An Inconvenient Truth (that's important). Eventually the birdemic starts, and Wood-robot and Whitney Moore have to try and survive, fortunately while in possession of a multitude of firearms. Along the way they pick up a couple of awful child actors, meet an orthologist (not my typo!) who explains that it is global warming which is causing the birds to attack humans because of all the fossil fuel being burnt and cars and bad bad humans, and also a tree-dwelling hippie who tells them the redwoods are dying because of global warming and oh my god just stop already with the messages! Then the movie ends. How does it end, you ask? The birds fly away. That's it. Nothing else.
The sequel to this piece of highly-entertaining garbage is called Birdemic 2: The Resurrection. I went into this thinking it was going to be one of those self-aware parodies of the original where the director has realised what has happened and decided to just join in on the joke. The inclusion of zombies and resurrected cavemen would have seemed to suggest that. Nope. He hadn't learned a thing. The funny thing is, everyone else except the director seems fully aware of what's going on. Well, except for Wood-robot - who knows what he's thinking, he's a blank slate. There's a new male character who genuinely looks like he is just goofing around on-camera to see how far he can go without the scene being re-shot (answer: pretty much as far as he wants). There's at least a couple of shots where Whitney Moore is visibly laughing at his antics and the scenes are left in. Even the student they hired to add in the CGI birds was messing around - several of the birds are flying around upside-down.
The sequel is much the same as the original. It takes forever for the birds to appear, instead you have to sit through awful awful scenes of tedious nothingness. Wood-robot and Whitney Moore meet up with the new guy - let's just call him New Guy - who is making a movie. Then they meet up with Whitney Moore's mom, they go to a meeting with some movie producers, they probably do other meeting-people-stuff I can't even be bothered remembering, and finally they go to the back-lots of Hollywood where the birds attack. Finally! That's when Whitney Moore remembers that her and Wood-robot were once attacked by birds. Thumbs up. This time the birds are extinct eagles and vultures coming out of the La Brea Tar Pits due to a mysterious red rain caused by global warming probably. The orthologist is there as well, because he is giving a lecture at a bird conference, and he tells the gang all about extinct eagles and vultures to their obvious intense boredom. Some cavemen come out of the tar pits too. Oh, and also some zombies crawl out of a graveyard because why not. Everybody fights off the birds with guns and karate kicks, but they have to watch out for the exploding acid. Wait, what? Finally they take shelter at a little zoo called the Wildlife Learning Center which is an actual zoo which exists! Seriously, google it. Guess how the movie ends? The birds fly away. The end.
I actually liked both these movies. They were so unbelievably bad they were totally watchable. I'm not sure I would re-watch them though.
Pound Of Flesh
In this 2015 movie, Jean Claude Van Damme's niece needs a kidney operation and Van Damme is her only match - but two days before the operation kidney thieves steal his kidney. BIG mistake! Using his very special set of skills - one of which is, you know, ignoring the fact that he just had his kidney cut out - Van Damme tracks down the thieves, aided only by his religious brother, an old man, and an Irish prostitute who has an acting range limited to "watching cute puppy videos on Youtube" and "ew, I just ate a really sour lemon" (surprisingly this movie is her sole acting credit on IMDB).
It's not actually a bad movie. It's one of those Van Damme movies where he's trying to be make it more of an action-thriller than a hard-core action movie, a wise move considering his age and how these days he looks more like a crack addict than a Universal Soldier. There is a lot of action, that notwithstanding, and the fight scenes are pretty good so it's worth watching I guess. There's a bit of a small twist at the end, but you might see it coming if you're paying attention.
In this 2015 movie, Jean Claude Van Damme's niece needs a kidney operation and Van Damme is her only match - but two days before the operation kidney thieves steal his kidney. BIG mistake! Using his very special set of skills - one of which is, you know, ignoring the fact that he just had his kidney cut out - Van Damme tracks down the thieves, aided only by his religious brother, an old man, and an Irish prostitute who has an acting range limited to "watching cute puppy videos on Youtube" and "ew, I just ate a really sour lemon" (surprisingly this movie is her sole acting credit on IMDB).
It's not actually a bad movie. It's one of those Van Damme movies where he's trying to be make it more of an action-thriller than a hard-core action movie, a wise move considering his age and how these days he looks more like a crack addict than a Universal Soldier. There is a lot of action, that notwithstanding, and the fight scenes are pretty good so it's worth watching I guess. There's a bit of a small twist at the end, but you might see it coming if you're paying attention.
I noticed that The Good Dinosaur has made it to RedBox, so I rented and watched it. The trailers did not appeal to me at all but I intended on seeing it eventually just so I can say I've seen every Pixar film. My thoughts? A better title would be The Mediocre Dinosaur. It's not a horrible movie, but it's not very good either. (though certainly much better than Cars 2, seriously, that movie was just awful)
The plot: in a world where dinosaurs (and other reptiles of the time) never went extinct, they live side by side with modern animals, including humans. The dinosaurs are sentient and have developed agriculture complex enough that they've domesticated corn. Arlo is a young apatosaur living on a farm with his parents and two siblings. He's very fearful and not good at much, he feels like a disappointment to his parents (though they do believe he'll make his mark someday) and really wants to find a way to make them proud. Soon after his father dies, Arlo has an accident and falls in the river near their farm. When he wakes up washed on shore, he's a long way from home. He makes friends with a feral human child (incapable of speaking) and names him Spot. Together they fight the elements, and other dangers, to get back to Arlo's home.
The most immediate issue, as you can see in the previews, is the character design. Years ago when I heard Pixar was making a dinosaur movie, I was pumped. Scientific depictions have changed a lot in the past few decades, and people now acknowledge that dinosaurs probably looked a lot crazier than we can ever imagine. Throw the animation geniuses at Pixar into that and we'd get some awesome stuff, right? Wrong. The designs are horribly generic, the same stuff we've been seeing for a long time. Another issue is that the backgrounds are realistic, but the character designs are very cartoony, the contrast is jarring and distracting. Another issue I have with the whole dinosaur thing is that they just don't really do anything with it. The dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) could be replaced with modern animals and it wouldn't change things at all. If dinosaurs are your selling point, they should matter a bit more.
The story and characters, two areas Pixar is usually strong in, fall flat as well in The Good Dinosaur. The storytelling overly simplistic, there really isn't much to it. There's nothing wrong with a simple story, but this movie doesn't really have enough content to make it work. The story type has also been done a million times before and they don't really do anything different enough to make it stand out. Most of the film follows Arlo and Spot. Arlo is fine as a character, but Spot's character can be described as "dog". He may be a non-verbal animal but if he's going to be a major character, he should be given more personality than that. Feels more like he should've been the comic relief sidekick pet in a film with a larger main cast rather than the x in the "a boy and his x" story.
I'm gonna make a few comparisons to Finding Nemo, since both movies share some major themes. They're both about a fearful animal that becomes separated from its family, and to reunite it must travel a dangerous landscape. (or in Marlin's case, seascape) While they get into a lot of danger, they also have cool experiences and meet cool and interesting people (well, animals) and learning not to let fear get in the way of experiencing life.
Finding Nemo did a lot of things right that TGD just didn't do well. For starters, the setting was much more interesting and varied. Marlin and Dory come across lots of different dangerous situations, and we see different environments. They get chased by a shark that tries to abstain from eating fish, they get help from a school of fish that loves impressions, they navigate through a huge group of jellyfish, meet some totally chill sea turtles, get swallowed by a whale, a pelican takes them through a chase scene with seagulls. None of these scenes feel pointless and the new characters we meet are developed and enjoyable despite only having a small amount of screen time. We see coral reefs, open sea, a sunken warship/submarine, and more. Background and side characters consist of a huge variety of marine animals. TGD is mostly just one environment without much variety. Granted, FN goes over a longer distance (I think...) while TGD tries to go for an old west feel, but with the premise they set up they could've done more even with a smaller setting. Arlo and Spot run into only a few characters, they are interesting but we don't spend a lot of time with them. The focus of the film is on Arlo and Spot, but as I mentioned, their relationship isn't interesting enough to carry a lot of scenes on its own.
The movie isn't unwatchable or anything, but it definitely lacks polish and doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It's so generic, it doesn't do anything new or interesting. The movie has been in development hell for a long time and it kind of feels like they rushed it out to get it over with. (granted, I understand how difficult it is to get a good movie out of something with a lot of production troubles) Unless you're a big Pixar/Disney fan, there's no reason to go out of your way to watch it.
On the plus side, a personal note... Growing up, I watched (against my will) Finding Nemo so many times that I got sick of it. I know it's a good movie, but it's hard for me to enjoy because of that. After seeing TGD, I have a better understanding of how good FN really is. And now I enjoy it a lot more, dare I say, I think I finally enjoy it the way it deserves to be enjoyed. I'm so happy right now, you don't even know.
The plot: in a world where dinosaurs (and other reptiles of the time) never went extinct, they live side by side with modern animals, including humans. The dinosaurs are sentient and have developed agriculture complex enough that they've domesticated corn. Arlo is a young apatosaur living on a farm with his parents and two siblings. He's very fearful and not good at much, he feels like a disappointment to his parents (though they do believe he'll make his mark someday) and really wants to find a way to make them proud. Soon after his father dies, Arlo has an accident and falls in the river near their farm. When he wakes up washed on shore, he's a long way from home. He makes friends with a feral human child (incapable of speaking) and names him Spot. Together they fight the elements, and other dangers, to get back to Arlo's home.
The most immediate issue, as you can see in the previews, is the character design. Years ago when I heard Pixar was making a dinosaur movie, I was pumped. Scientific depictions have changed a lot in the past few decades, and people now acknowledge that dinosaurs probably looked a lot crazier than we can ever imagine. Throw the animation geniuses at Pixar into that and we'd get some awesome stuff, right? Wrong. The designs are horribly generic, the same stuff we've been seeing for a long time. Another issue is that the backgrounds are realistic, but the character designs are very cartoony, the contrast is jarring and distracting. Another issue I have with the whole dinosaur thing is that they just don't really do anything with it. The dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) could be replaced with modern animals and it wouldn't change things at all. If dinosaurs are your selling point, they should matter a bit more.
The story and characters, two areas Pixar is usually strong in, fall flat as well in The Good Dinosaur. The storytelling overly simplistic, there really isn't much to it. There's nothing wrong with a simple story, but this movie doesn't really have enough content to make it work. The story type has also been done a million times before and they don't really do anything different enough to make it stand out. Most of the film follows Arlo and Spot. Arlo is fine as a character, but Spot's character can be described as "dog". He may be a non-verbal animal but if he's going to be a major character, he should be given more personality than that. Feels more like he should've been the comic relief sidekick pet in a film with a larger main cast rather than the x in the "a boy and his x" story.
I'm gonna make a few comparisons to Finding Nemo, since both movies share some major themes. They're both about a fearful animal that becomes separated from its family, and to reunite it must travel a dangerous landscape. (or in Marlin's case, seascape) While they get into a lot of danger, they also have cool experiences and meet cool and interesting people (well, animals) and learning not to let fear get in the way of experiencing life.
Finding Nemo did a lot of things right that TGD just didn't do well. For starters, the setting was much more interesting and varied. Marlin and Dory come across lots of different dangerous situations, and we see different environments. They get chased by a shark that tries to abstain from eating fish, they get help from a school of fish that loves impressions, they navigate through a huge group of jellyfish, meet some totally chill sea turtles, get swallowed by a whale, a pelican takes them through a chase scene with seagulls. None of these scenes feel pointless and the new characters we meet are developed and enjoyable despite only having a small amount of screen time. We see coral reefs, open sea, a sunken warship/submarine, and more. Background and side characters consist of a huge variety of marine animals. TGD is mostly just one environment without much variety. Granted, FN goes over a longer distance (I think...) while TGD tries to go for an old west feel, but with the premise they set up they could've done more even with a smaller setting. Arlo and Spot run into only a few characters, they are interesting but we don't spend a lot of time with them. The focus of the film is on Arlo and Spot, but as I mentioned, their relationship isn't interesting enough to carry a lot of scenes on its own.
The movie isn't unwatchable or anything, but it definitely lacks polish and doesn't have a whole lot going for it. It's so generic, it doesn't do anything new or interesting. The movie has been in development hell for a long time and it kind of feels like they rushed it out to get it over with. (granted, I understand how difficult it is to get a good movie out of something with a lot of production troubles) Unless you're a big Pixar/Disney fan, there's no reason to go out of your way to watch it.
On the plus side, a personal note... Growing up, I watched (against my will) Finding Nemo so many times that I got sick of it. I know it's a good movie, but it's hard for me to enjoy because of that. After seeing TGD, I have a better understanding of how good FN really is. And now I enjoy it a lot more, dare I say, I think I finally enjoy it the way it deserves to be enjoyed. I'm so happy right now, you don't even know.
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
San Andreas - 6/10
It's a big budget disaster movie starring The Rock. It's entertaining, and seems quite similar to 'The Day After Tomorrow' and '2012': parent(s) try to save their kids. Watch it if it's on TV and you enjoyed the aforementioned movies.
Tracers - 4/10
I like Taylor Lautner and parkour, but this movie was a waste of two hours. Basically Taylor is a down on his luck delivery guy in New York who teaches himself parkour. He then joins a parkour gang of bandits, falls for the girl, and they drive off into the sunset. The end. The free running scenes are great, and it is clear that Taylor did many of his own stunts, but still, don't bother watching it.
It's a big budget disaster movie starring The Rock. It's entertaining, and seems quite similar to 'The Day After Tomorrow' and '2012': parent(s) try to save their kids. Watch it if it's on TV and you enjoyed the aforementioned movies.
Tracers - 4/10
I like Taylor Lautner and parkour, but this movie was a waste of two hours. Basically Taylor is a down on his luck delivery guy in New York who teaches himself parkour. He then joins a parkour gang of bandits, falls for the girl, and they drive off into the sunset. The end. The free running scenes are great, and it is clear that Taylor did many of his own stunts, but still, don't bother watching it.
Chlidonias, have you seen Foodfight? It's on a similar level to Birdemic in just how bad it is, some people consider it so bad its good. If nothing else, it's bad in such strange ways that it's hard to forget. I find myself quoting lines to anyone who will get it.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, LEONAAAAAAARD!
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, LEONAAAAAAARD!
I haven't seen it but I've heard legends of its existence. I can't say I like bad animated movies - it just isn't the same as bad live-action movies.
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
This is on Netflix, and I saw the blurb and preview still shot while flicking through last night. Gina Carino is not who I thought she was!!! All this time when I read your posts obsessing about her I was picturing (I had to look up her name) Elsa Pataky from the last 3 Fast and Furious movies. Elsa is hot - Gina, not so much...
I've said it before - Robot Monster. Classic B-grade horror movie from the 50's, thought by many to be even funnier than Plan 9. Bad acting, bad script, bad sets, continuity issues, crappy effects. Just before filming they discovered they couldn't afford the silver spacesuit for the robot alien, so they put the actor in a gorilla suit and stuck a goldfish bowl on his head. One of my all-time favourite B-grades.
Hix
I can't say I particularly like Elsa Pataky. She's alright, but that's about it.
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