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

Oh well... damn. Well...

The Dark Knight Rises - 7/10, or B-

And that's being generous.

Definitely one of the biggest cinematic disappointments I have ever had. And I'm not saying it wasn't a good film, it was, but it didn't even live up to even half of what the other two films were.
It wasn't bad, but regardless, I left the theater feeling empty and cheated.

First let me say that the opening thirty minutes were absolutely incredible. Bane's introduction, Hathaway as Catwoman, Batman's return (My heart jumped at that ramp jump, Jesus Christ). Unbelievable. For a minute I was sure Nolan had done the impossible. But then everything started to feel jumbly and incomplete...

I felt sick to my stomach during the montage of Selina leading Bruce to Bane under the tunnels. Unbelievably cheesy, I wanted to check my totem to see if Nolan actually put that in there. That "Who's behind you?" "ME" bit was awful, as well as the rather awkward split shots of him attacking the mercenaries. And I know his initial fight with Bane is meant to show that he has lost his touch, but that showdown was painful to watch, in more ways than one. No music? Really? And the camera was too distant from the scene as well.

The whole random subplot of Bane's plan to take over Gotham felt cliche, unreasonable and half-baked. The bits with the orphans felt out of Spider-Man 3, and the prison segment seemed to emulate a bad Rocky sequel.

My biggest beef with the movie was Bane. I know he's supposed to be brute force personified and not have much of a personality, but he did feel one-dimensional and, well. Boring. Plus his death was absolutely awful, after his role as villain was usurped by Miranda/Talia he seemed to be nothing less than a goon, and that's how he died: this huge, hulking monster gets killed by a single gun shot, and not just that, he gets blown away into the background. Really? Foley gets a close-up when he dies but not fucking Bane?

Overall, the film did not have much action, imaginative scenes, intensity or a unique score (One of The Dark Knight's many strengths). Though I must say Levitt did a great job as Blake, Oldman was under-used but still brilliant as Gordon and this may be Bale's best performance of the trilogy (as Bruce, not as Batman). The cinematography had its moments of amazement, but overall the film lacked interesting framing and cheated its use of IMAX.

Oh well. I guess some things are too good to be true, such as a perfect Batman trilogy.

Fun Fact: Batman Begins - 9/10 The Dark Knight - 10/10
 
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Cracker Funk said:
To stay on-topic, I just picked up an old film from my childhood -- Tremors. Total B-movie, and lots of fun. Underrated semi-classic. B+
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Ah! Just watched that PG-13 gem the other week with my little girl.
Other than being appalled by the language it's a solid story well executed.
I refuse to watch any of the sequels. ;)


fernando97echeverria said:
That sounds like most of Cracker's favorites. :P
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Well, then here's some more for him:
Horror Films: PG & PG-13 http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?p=278744#post278744 :D
 
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Mother of Tears....sigh....i saw the awful reviews and read about all the changes argento made(so no expectations) and it still left me so dissapointed. The 3 Mothers films are now compleate but the last one..Mother of Tears lacks flair and style. I really think Argento has lost his gift...(we shall see if he boches Dracula 3d)...man i really wanted to like this fim.....so guys just stick with Susperia and Inferno only!

Just Before Dawn..old 80 slasher flick..good suff here...i showed it outside on a movie screen with some friends...A bit of interesting take on the 80's slashers , good stuff!

The Beyond...classic Fulci zombi movie with plot hole you can drive a truck thru...good stuff!
 
The Eye

2002 Hong Kong Original - 6/10

2008 American Remake - 5/10


The Pang Brothers original had some amateurish shots in it, the shifting between two locations/times effect was pretty cool, and the overall story was fair to kinda clumsy.

The title 'Gin gwai' or '見鬼' has an interesting translation: http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html = Seeing ogre.
Lord knows that was probably a better name for the film than 'The Eye', which is a misnomer since the film is NOT about some spooky eye that sees anything.
No, it's about haunted body parts (cell memory in the Americanized version), namely a pair of corneas in a transplant.
Yeah, so the title is misleadingly wrong and the haunted/cell memory in transplanted corneas thing is kinduva leap, but whatever.
Going with the premise...

First spooky vision is of a spirit in the exam room. No bearing, point, purpose, or sensibility with the rest of the events. No dead people in the room. WTH?!

Second spooky vision is when a dark 'escort' is currently taking away the spirit of the recently deceased. Fine. Great cool. Patients that die in the hospital often have no staff that are aware of the event whatsoever and none of the other patients in a ward does either.

Third spooky vision is when the little kid dies and then goes away with the dark 'escort'.

Then all of a sudden she starts seeing the dark 'escorts' coming BEFORE a deathly event as some sort of premonition.

Umm... you changed the rules, Pang Bros.
And when the American nubes remade it they pretty much just rubber stamped the exact same non sequitur story.

The review and revenue stats between IMDB, RT, & BOM geehaw that Americans don't so much love remakes of foreign films just so that they don't have to read all of those "confusing" subtitles and can "better" identify with round-eye gringos (gasp!) but they're just prejudiced against foreign films in general. F#ckers.

For God's sake, just watch the original and skip the remake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGLKHKwwAiI

And even then, don't expect to be all creeped out. The story's just fair to begin with.



Cold Storage - 6/10

Umm... Only in the most liberal senses is COLD STORAGE a horror movie. It's more like a low burn (not slow burn) thriller similar to POPULATION 436.

Honestly, for a est. $900k budget the filmmakers did fairly well.
Shot with a Sony HDW-F900 (http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-HDWF900R/) the image quality is fair enough, and certainly better than what Uwe Boll achieved with more expensive equipment and eleven times the budget on 'BloodRayne: The Third Reich.'

IMDB reviews have been kind, but don't get me wrong, it's not a 'bad' film, per sé. It just should be viewed in context of its budget and production crew's experience, which is little.

Necrophilia is not on the agenda, so don't get too worked up over the premise as described in the logline/teaser.

It's a mental health story. In fact, the other story it most reminds me of is 'Defendor' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1303828/), which bookends nice with 'Super' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1512235/). And if you really wanna go how wild off the non-horror mental health beaten path, 'Lars and the Real Girl' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564/).
Spend a weekend watching these four and you might need to have your doc call you in a week of antidepressants. Ha!

Little gore. Some fair practical effects. The opening sequence could be chucked. And the title is evidence of a complete mental impasse of the writer/producer/distributor. There's very little in the story germane to being stuck in a residential freezer unit. Beats the sh!t outta me. Whatever.

Okay. Seriously. This image hasn't a GD thing to do with the film.
coldstorage-2006-2.jpg


Effin' marketers.

I wouldn't recommend watching this, but I wouldn't advise anyone to NOT watch it, either. You probably just have better entertainment options available is what I'm getting at.
 
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Ted - 4/10 While this movie had it's moments, particularly in the beginning... the narration from Patrick Stewart was incredible: "nothing is more powerful than a young boy's wish. Except an Apache helicopter, an absolute death machine."


Then it had a line or two here and there, that made me chuckle, but ultimately it was long and boring, with too many failed attempts at humor and throwaway pop culture references that aren't funny.

What gets me the most is that somehow, this movie got a lot of good reviews... at about the same time That's My Boy came out, a movie containing very similar humor, though done better, which received mixed to negative reviews... Ted contained too many fart jokes, while TMB contained none at all, yet the critical reception switches these two truths.

I was told not to expect live action Family Guy.... I got live action Family Guy (without TOO many cutaway gags.)
 
The Dark Knight Rises. Oh I don't know what to give it. Maybe a 7.5 or an 8?

Possibly the thing that I liked most about this one is the score. I know someone mentioned that some are complaining about the score being overwrought or bombastic or something. I guess that's sort of what I liked about it. I saw The Dark Knight on the IMAX and it was a fairly miserable experience. I had a crappy seat and the sound made me want to flee the theater. Loud and noisy and ridiculous. But I suppose that was the theater's fault. They had it turned up too far or the set-up wrong or something. But I saw this in a different theater and it was...gooder. Yeah, in some places it's as though they turned up the score to add drama to scenes or sequences that perhaps didn't deserve it or weren't mustering the amount of drama they wanted to achieve otherwise. Or, isn't that mostly what a score is supposed to help with, so perhaps I should guess that some of those scenes needed the booming score?

These Batman movies leave me a little bit cool, I guess, compared to those of you who love them. For one thing, I've had a difficult time buying into the motivations of the League of Shadows from the beginning. Never more so than in this third film. I know we can say that I shouldn't question it too seriously since it's just a comic book movie. But I think that would be a cop-out. Don't these films ask us to take them more seriously than that?

I enjoyed Anne Hathaway as Selina quite a lot. Of course in real life I don't like thiefs. But actually she's kind of a breath of fresh air compared to the previous love interest and slightly bitchy and holier than thou Rachel Dawes. For sure, she's more fun. And I'm not missing the irony(?) of my saying that when you really could say that Selina is just as holier than thou as Rachel was...but in a different way. In the right hands, Hathaway in her own Catwoman movie could be real cool. I'd like to see it. The real cool one, that is. Oh hell, I think the real cool one I think I'm vaguely imagining would be black as pitch and wickedly fun. I'm not too sure what I think that would look like. Anyway, I know that's hoping for too much.

But I'm pretty sure the best of the three is The Dark Knight. And yes, it's largely because of Heath Ledger's Joker. I was largely chilly on TDK when it came out. But like so many movies it's grown on me...largely because of HL. But, as we all know, it was not only HL who made HL great in that movie. It was the whole team. For example, one of the things that makes his performance so great and intense is that surprisingly unnannoying ringing sound in those especially tense scenes. I love how they did that. So, HL was great and he really delivered, but, as we all know, it took a village to make Heath Ledger great in TDK (like the sound designers or whoever was responsible for that artfully placed ringing sound).

And yeah, that ADR or whatever was involved in Bane's dialogue audio. Not so good. I shudder to think that that's the best they could come with with a 250 million dollar budget.

So overall, it was pretty enjoyable and entertaining.

*****

Lockout. Ack, I'm not sure what score to give it. Maybe something like a 6.5 to a 7. I'd never cut it as a professional critic.

I enjoyed it quite a bit despite some implausibilites etc. Sort of a B movie (though I'm not at all sure about what qualifies as a B movie). The best part is Guy Pearce's wise-cracking comedian schtick. He kept me entertained throughout.

The
motorcycle chase scene
has some VFX shortcomings. No doubt a consequence of the film's less than huge budget (20 million according to IMDb). If I had to guess, I'd guess they decided, wisely, to spend more of their limited money on that
fall to earth sequence
etc, which looks quite good.

So, it won't win Best Picture, but if you love your scifi action flicks, even when they're far enough from perfect, I have no trouble recommending this one.

And, hear me. This has me thinking that Guy Pearce wouldn't make bad Roland, I wot.

Yar.
 
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21 Jump Street - 9/10
L!
M!
F!
A!
O!

Dear, God. Please don't let Sony f#ckup the sequel

Sony books '21 Jump Street' sequel
Michael Bacall to pen the screenplay, working with Jonah Hill on story
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118051581?refCatId=13



The Woman in Black - 3/10

Just... forgettably lame.
So lame I forgot I watched it.
I'm getting sick and tired of movies compelling me to throw the subtitles on and fast forwarding @ 2X through them.

The BEST thing about TWIB?
The wiki page image of it's screenwriter.
413px-Jane_Goldman.jpg

I suhhh-wearrr that picture is better than the film, (even if it's a 2009 pic of her.)
 
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richy said:
But I'm pretty sure the best of the three is The Dark Knight. And yes, it's largely because of Heath Ledger's Joker. I was largely chilly on TDK when it came out. But like so many movies it's grown on me...largely because of HL. But, as we all know, it was not only HL who made HL great in that movie. It was the whole team. For example, one of the things that makes his performance so great and intense is that surprisingly unnannoying ringing sound in those especially tense scenes. I love how they did that. So, HL was great and he really delivered, but, as we all know, it took a village to make Heath Ledger great in TDK (like the sound designers or whoever was responsible for that artfully placed ringing sound).

And yeah, that ADR or whatever was involved in Bane's dialogue audio. Not so good. I shudder to think that that's the best they could come with with a 250 million dollar budget.
Click to expand...

That ringing sound is the score (violin being played with a razor), I hope you know :lol:

And yes about Bane's voice. I remember watching the prologue in December and understanding every word Bane uttered, and I loved it. But I almost stood up and went What the hell? seeing it in theaters. It sounded like audio from another movie pasted on, the worst of the dubs was their new version of "The fire rises" from the opening.

... and The Dark Knight was a monster machine of perfection. Ledger as the Joker was just one of its many cogs that made it work, but the thing that really differentiates it from The Dark Knight Rises is that it was plotted better, thought out better, shot better and much, much more memorable all together.
 
for me the Dark Knight Rises was one of the most enjoyable films i have ever watched, i couldn't fault it, apart from some moments of sound.

i actually have noticed that not a lot of americans like batman dark knight rises? i dunno if its something to do with most of the main characters being british which one journalist also had noticed.... *cough cough*, but to me the brits done the batman series proud and will most definitely be the hardest batman film to beat.
 
the orginal Dirty Pair project eden....one of my all time fave classic anime...i dont know i seem to like the classic 80's and some 90's anime than what is out now..i kind of like the artwork better......anyways good short ova that has alot of action.
 
arrodiii said:
Wild Strawberries - 9/10 - An absolutely wonderful film. Really disappointed that it took me so long to watch it
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+1000 One of my all-time favorites (see, I don't JUST like crap horror and fantasy films!) Possibly Bergman's best, though Cries and Whispers is pretty astounding too.

Oddly enough, Psychosis, I'm also on an anime kick. Watching Excel Saga, which is a blast. I wish Netflix offered the option to dub or sub. A good dub I don't mind, but the screechy-voice main character is really getting on my nerves. Keeps me from giving it more than 7/10, but otherwise I'd go higher. It's largely parody of anime conventions, with touches of sci-fi/adventure. The series opens with the main character (Excel) being assigned to kill all manga artists...starting with the creator of Excel Saga.
 
Clownhouse - 8/10, very entertaining slasher film and one of my all-time favs.

Stuart Little - 7/10, drags toward the end but still pretty awesome.
 
The Sweet Hereafter - 6.5/10 - premise is really good, though I think that it lacked in some areas

Permanent Midnight - 6.5/10 - funny in some parts, I thought Ben Stiller did a pretty good job

The Artist - 9/10 - wonderful film
 
Rock of Ages - 6/10 : I gave it two extra points, 'cos I really love musicals. This is not a great one, though. I also gave it two extra points for being set in the late '80s, when hair metal ruled the world. Heh, I'd just moved to the US and soaked in the Los Angeles scene at the time, so very nostalgic as well. Paul Giamatti's sleazy character was lovely. Alec Baldwin & Russel Brand were pretty cool, too. Catherine Zeta Jones is hilarious in both her numbers. Oh, none of the songs are originals, btw - all covers of real songs from the time. Not a complicated film at all, but feel-good rose-tinted memories of LA. :cool:

The Hunger Games - 1/10 : Seriously wtf? Sat through two hours & twenty minutes of tapioca. Went in expecting The Running Man meets Gladiator meets Logan's Run - left theater pretty pissed that all they managed to accomplish was to set up a possible continuation to resolve all the issues later. Woody Harrelson's character gives this film three points... dragging it up from -2. I gotta quit watching all these movies that are apparently targeted at young teens. At least have the courtesy to make that plain in the trailer. :angry:

Edit: Also, their DP was either drunk or had a tragic parkinson's condition. I have never seen such shaky, shoddy camerawork. Unbelievable.

Should I go see The Raven before that gets yanked at the dollar theater? One day left; barely survived a week there.
 
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