movies What's the last film you watched? And rate it!

The Raid 2 2/5

I gave it the extra star for the great fight scenes. Despite that I still fell asleep during the movie. Just came back and finished the last 20 minutes. Maybe if the boss gave his henchmen a gun instead of a baseball bat he would still be alive. Yeah lets have 50 of my people die fighting an expert kung fu master because I can't spare a bullet. So stupid beyond words.

And the dumbest part.. one of my friends, the only friend I have that works in film, said it was the best movie of the year. LOL
 
We saw Raid 2 recently too, and umm yeah, nowhere near as good as the first. I can live with the absurdities of these sorts of films, but it just felt a bit contrived and uninspired overall.

There was some nice choreography though, and while the cinematography was also a bit cool at times, it falls flat next to the first movie.

6/10
 
Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz - 10/10
Watched this for class, this was my second viewing. This is still one of my absolute favorite films. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, the rest of the cast, the dialogue, the music, the scenes, the story, still absolutely brilliant. Now I appreciate the filmmaking more than I did the first time (that was during my phase when only obvious artistry appealed to my sensibility), there are some really incredible subtle filmmaking techniques at work here. I cried several times of course, what a brilliant film!

Un Chien Andalou directed by Luis Buñuel - 10/10
Also watched this for class, this is my fourth or fifth viewing. Still one of my favorite films also. I noticed more brilliant inconsistencies in the film this time, and it always gets a strong visceral reaction from me. I loved seeing my classmates watching it for the first time and being shocked by the eye slicing scene at the beginning.
 
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: 4/10, It had it's funny moments and overall wasn't bad. However, there were a lot of plot holes, felt a bit cliche and generally abused sentimentalism.
 
The Puppetmaster directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien - 10/10
Before reviewing this film, I think I should mention that I have been going to a retrospective of all of Hou's films in New York and have been blown away by about half of his films. This was the second one in the series but I missed it because the train was having problems, and it is considered to be one of his best. So I decided to take a trip to Boston from New York in order to catch it where the retrospective was touring next. And yes this movie was worth that trip LOL. Once again this is Hou revolutionizing the historical film as he did with A City Of Sadness and Good Men, Good Women. And again he manages to make the historical personal without making it sentimental or nostalgic. In this case he films the story of one of his regular actors, Li Tianlu who happens to be a cultural icon/hero in Taiwan. The movie is a mix of scenes that stage events from Li's life, puppet performances, opera performances, and Li talking about his life to the camera (as well as voiceover). While this is not my favorite of Hou's films, I think it is the closest to achieving the level of realism he sought for. I always have made the argument that the two key aspects that a film needs to have to achieve an extra degree of realism is that it needs to have a respect for performance within a film, and it needs to have a respect for storytelling within a film and The Puppetmaster has both. In the film, the puppet performances are not a backdrop or a detail to the setting, they are an essential element to the film. Likewise, Li's anecdotes shared through interview and voiceover are essential to the film especially in creating humor. These two elements along with Hou's usual method of static long takes and elaborate staging make this film achieve a level of realism that I don't think I've seen in any other film in my life. After watching most of Hou's films now, I've decided to change my position on Hou that I made after seeing Flowers Of Shanghai for the first time. I said he was a rigorous formalist in the vein of Ozu, but now I think that he adjusts his form to the content he is trying to show so I would say he is a dynamic formalist that happens to have a certain range of topics that interest him (first the personal coming of age films, then the historical films, then the 'new generation' films along with the occasional gangster film). In this way he is probably more like Kurosawa, only his style/themes are a bit more consistent and seem more Ozu-esque in the way that it is focused on the mundane. Overall this film is one of my favorites by Hou, probably my second or third favorite in a list of many films that I consider to be masterpieces (I think 9 of them are).
 
Days of Future Past 3/5

I'd give this an extra half star.. very enjoyable. The first act is definitely the best of the film and uses all of the most impressive specials effects. (Aside from the quicksilver scene in the trailers)

Some parts were definitely unrealistic. Full automaton flying robots in the 70s :lol: We can't even do that shit now, 40 years later. This film makes it seem like we could have sent them into vietnam to do our fighting.

But yeah, good popcorn flick.
 
Million Dollar Arm: 2/10, my major gripe with most sports movies is the "montages instead of character development" thing, which was prevalent here.
 
Begin Again. 3/10, it worked fine as fodder for a rainy Sunday afternoon when you just want to switch your brain off and uses some interesting techniques, but it's corny (in a bad way), the acting is unconvincing (with the exception of Hailee Steinfeld), and absolutely riddled with cliches.
 
Luc Besson collection films:

The Fifth Element : 5/5
This is a great sci-fi film. Specially extreme well edited.

Subway: 3/5
Really nice style, not so interesting plot or characters.

Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle) 4/5
Extreme well made and kind of interesting film. A bit slow at times.

The Big Blue: 2/5
Didn't like this actually. Boring, slow, Jean Reno character was really bad on this film. Nice scenery and images about the sea. Weak plot.
 
DeadChannel said:
Million Dollar Arm: 2/10, my major gripe with most sports movies is the "montages instead of character development" thing, which was prevalent here.
Click to expand...

But Rocky was soooooo cool. :lol: ;)

Best montage ever? Robert De niro in Taxi Driver. That was a great 'becoming badass' scene. It's not very sporting though I guess.
 
Snowpiercer 3/5

Dystopian future, frozen wasteland, starring captain america.
This was entertaining although some things really got on my nerves. Near the end of the movie suddenly the korean guy and american guy stop using the translator and can understand each other?? What the hell is that about. No explanation.

And that ending.. terrible ending.
Listened to the audio commentary, this guy is an idiot (the film critic) talking about the school scene he says we never see the kids leave! Directly as we see the kids running away.. lol.

Here it is for your amusement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnUTsjxVzjg
 
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Tragic Hero directed by Taylor Wong - 7/10
Wow I haven't seen such a good heroic bloodshed film in a while. This is one of the few series where the sequel is actually much better than the original (this film is significantly better than its predecessor Rich And Famous) I'm pretty sure the studios knew it since in fact this film was released before the original just because it appealed more to action audiences that loved John Woo type films. The original film was Taylor Wong as usual, making a mediocre film with a great cast, but this one was better than other Wong films because it actually had an interesting story and characters. The second film completes the story as it was left off in the first, and so I would say that watching both would be ideal but the second film can stand on its own since it does a good job at explaining the key moments of the first film at the start of the movie. How does Taylor Wong finally succeed in making a good heroic bloodshed film rather than a mediocre one? Simply not mess around with too much story and emotional scenes because those are his weakness, instead he just gives us great action scene after great action scene and whenever he does try to tell the story through dramatic scenes, he fails as usual. The story itself is good but Taylor Wong is horrible at storytelling apparently, so he takes what could have been an even greater series than Woo's A Better Tomorrow series and makes it just pretty good. The first 20 minutes or so are usual Taylor Wong decent filmmaking, but after that it gets really good with a lot of intense scenes that any heroic bloodshed (or just action genre in general) fan would love, so stick past the 20 minutes to see Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau blow stuff up and shoot people a million times before they die (it seems like in these movies characters never die lol). I think anyone into action movies should give this series a try since the whole is greater than the sum of its parts as the first one has an interesting story but not as much intense action scenes (although there are a few) and the second just completes the story and is pretty much just filled with intense action scenes and a few almost operatic drama scenes.
 
Godzilla 2014

2 / 5

So boring. It took me THREE sittings to finish this movie. The only good part is brian cranston in the beginning but he doesn't get much screen time.
 
Escape Plan 3/5

3/5 is a fantastic rating for this film, because I was sure I would hate it! I knew that the prison would be stupid and insecure from the beginning, and I was right. It's a joke of a "most secure prison" in the world, because russia has much more secure prisons than this. You don't need a specialist, etc, you just have to watch a simple documentary on russian prisons and you'll see what a REAL prison is like. You see, they don't have a death penalty in russia. They keep everyone alive, and they need intense prisons because of it.

In spite of the silly nature of the prison, this movie still kept things engaging and entertaining right up until the end. So it was a good popcorn flick that didn't irritate me as much as anticipated :)
 
Meshes Of The Afternoon directed by Maya Deren - 10/10
Wow, I haven't seen an experimental film like this in such a long time, just absolutely brilliant. I don't even know how to describe it, there's just something right about the cinematography, editing, staging, and the added musical score works as well.

The Birds directed by Alfred Hitchcock - 9/10
This is one of those few films that has me changing my opinion about it at just about every minute of the film. I always was thinking this is good, but how good? Well by the end I loved it and think it's an extremely interesting film because it's just so odd, it really is a strange film. I'm not quite convinced it's a masterpiece, but I think it's close, and maybe I'll change my mind with further viewings.
 
Protector 2 2/5

The SFX don't really sell. And then it lessens the impacts of the real stunts because you start to think of the movie as fake. It feels sort of like a student film, experimenting with different things that don't always work and then leaving them in the final product anyway.

Overall this is a huge disappointment. The first protector featured one of the greatest fight scenes I've ever seen (FOUR straight minutes without a single cut) as well as numerous stunts highlighting the athletic prowess of tony jaa.

This one not special ..

I, Frankenstein 3/5

Actually better than I was expecting. I thought it would be really cheesy, but the actors pulled it off.
 
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