Movies you've seen recently

[Oerwinde]

Peter Jackson confirmed once he's done with the Hobbit, he's moving on to the Tintin sequel. This makes me happy.

[Labadal]

Prisoners.

Heard good things about it. I was told that if one likes the movie Seven, then you might like Prisoners. While Seven is in a league of its own, Prisoners was very good.

[LadyCrimson]

Huh, the new Hobbit movie has been getting good reviews.  I'll probably enjoy it, I liked the first one.

I'm looking forward to the Smaug parts. But that's about it.

I think I just would have liked The Hobbit more if they'd kept it to two movies like originally planned/envisioned instead of making it another trilogy.

[LadyCrimson]

Mama - it was on "free" HBO on-demand, so...

I'd heard ok reviews of it, for a ghost/scares film. But for me it was neither jump-scary or very entertaining. It was actually quite boring.  It did have some nice camerawork here and there, with dark atmosphere....and Mr. Blond-Stud from GoT is always nice eye candy, even if his actual role (two roles, actually, playing twin brothers) was pretty small and useless.

 

For a ghost/tragedy type film, for my money you still can't beat Lady in White. I'll take human characterization/mystery over bizarre CGI imagery/gross outs, truncated plotlines and Grudge-like "boo" moments.

[Labadal]

Watched Lady Vengeance.

 

Been watching lots of Asian movies lately and it's a good change. They are usually a bit crazy, at least the ones I watch.

[Blarghagh]

Huh, the new Hobbit movie has been getting good reviews.  I'll probably enjoy it, I liked the first one.

 

Loved it, thought it was better than Unexpected Journey. I'm taking these movies as a bad D&D campaign brought to life. Not a good adaptation of the book, but I don't care because I'm immensely entertained. If you're a Tolkien purist or care at all about the books, you should probably skip it. But personally, I thought Smaug alone was worth the ticket price.

 

I'll never make a case for these movies being good, but I love them all the same. These are not going to hold up to a marathon viewing, though. Too many random encounters.

Edited December 15, 2013 by TrueNeutral

[Calax]

Thor Dark World last night. Was good although it seemed like they were a little to much in step with comic books in how they swapped continuity around. It just feels like one star is going to say "Give me umpteen million bucks or your entire franchise is toast!" and everything will collapse.

 

Liked it overall, and did think that they needed to make Loki less the snarker, and give him back his more sinister side a bit.

 

Also Enders Game (Needed to be two movies) and Hunger Games 2: Return to Hunger Games. Second hunger games needed it's pacing adjusted to suit being on the screen better. The whole "new evil dude in the district" bit felt overplayed for how little it was in the actual movie, and could have just been mixed with another issue that they were facing rather than it's own scene.

[Raithe]

Sad movie news..

 

Peter O'Tool dies, aged 81.

[Elerond]

Just come from watching new Hobbit. I am not sure what is my final verdict for the movie, but at least it isn't too awful to watch.

[Woldan]

The Hobbit : Desolation of Smaug

 

Minor spoiler ahead! 

 

Like so many others I liked it tons better than ''An Unexpected Journey'', the pacing was much better, the story didn't drag and there were less comical slapstick scenes which I really hate in all kinds of movies. The romance between Tauriel (shes really damn hot by the way) and the token-dwarf-#4 felt incredibly forced and cheesy though, it was painful painful to watch, it was like the love fantasy of a 9 year old.  Another thing that kind of irked me was the Orks dieing like flies, yeah I get it, Elves are good fighters but..seriously? Turn the damn god-mode off. 

 

However, I still don't really care much about any of the characters. Well except Smaug, I absolutely love this arrogant, greedy pompous dragon and I was so happy that they didn't kill him off. His facial expressions, they way he moved and how he played with his prey, best movie dragon so far. 

Edited December 15, 2013 by Woldan

[JFSOCC]

Watched Lady Vengeance.

 

Been watching lots of Asian movies lately and it's a good change. They are usually a bit crazy, at least the ones I watch.

great movie, the entire vengeance trilogy is just so sad

I wonder when Hollywood knows how to make tragedies again, because right now they only know the heroes journey.

 

I finished watching dark angel (tv series) I love season one, the Character of Max is perfect, I don't think there would be anyone who is closer to my perfect woman, but by looks and personality. But the second season ****s it all up, it's plagued by terrible writing, clichéd storylines, exposition dumps, and very out of character dialogue. Seeing a strong woman turned into whiny weak girl was a real shame. Seeing sociopathic characters show feelings and care out of the blue doesn't make any sense. It had some interesting things, but the first season is much better in quality.

The scene where the kids have to invade their old barracks was beautiful, the show should have ended there

 

[Maedhros]

 

 

Desolation of Smaug. Worst movie made in the Middle-earth universe so far (and that includes those cartoons from the 70s).

Oh is that out now? I won't see it in the theater but I suppose my usual "I saw the first one" means I'll see it when it's on PPV. I didn't like the first one much tho. It wasn't bad, exactly - just boring. Sometimes magic can't be done twice.

 

 

The first Hobbit film suffered from poor pacing due to all of the shoe-horning of Silmarillion material in there to pad it out to a trilogy.

 

 

Most of the scenes that aren't in the novel is just fan fiction from Petter Jackson, with a few exceptions. They don't have the rights to Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales. Agree that all those new scenes totally messed up the pacing though.

 

Desolation of Smaug as a movie fails because they're trying to make a lighthearted adventure novel into an epic to match Lord of the Rings. Never gonna work, and they should've focused on what makes the Hobbit a good novel - Bilbo's adventure. All that other stuff is irrelevant to the story of The Hobbit. They had the right idea when they expanded the Bard character, as he kinda appeared out of nowhere in the book, but pretty much everything else just lessens the experience. Why did they think it was a good idea to keep

drawing out the Smaug fight. It made the dragon look like an idiot. "Hey you, over here!!" Seriously?

 

 

--------

 

Top 5 movies this year:

 

1. The Act of Killing

2. Prisoners

3. Rush

4. Before Midnight

5 The East

Edited December 15, 2013 by Thingolfin

[Raithe]

 

Watched Lady Vengeance.

 

Been watching lots of Asian movies lately and it's a good change. They are usually a bit crazy, at least the ones I watch.

great movie, the entire vengeance trilogy is just so sad

I wonder when Hollywood knows how to make tragedies again, because right now they only know the heroes journey.

 

I finished watching dark angel (tv series) I love season one, the Character of Max is perfect, I don't think there would be anyone who is closer to my perfect woman, but by looks and personality. But the second season ****s it all up, it's plagued by terrible writing, clichéd storylines, exposition dumps, and very out of character dialogue. Seeing a strong woman turned into whiny weak girl was a real shame. Seeing sociopathic characters show feelings and care out of the blue doesn't make any sense. It had some interesting things, but the first season is much better in quality.

The scene where the kids have to invade their old barracks was beautiful, the show should have ended there

 

 

If you want the "finale" , they did 3 novelisations.  Well, one is the story of Max post first escape, up until her arrival in Seattle. The 2nd novel is 1/3 the final episode of season 2, and 2/3 what's going on after, and the 3rd novel wraps up what was actually going on with the weird eugenics cult.

 

Edit: And yes, the 2nd season gets very weird and incredibly plot-holey. I mean, c'mon. One minute they had no idea what any of the escaped group looked like after all this time and the next "oh we've actually had clones of you guys back at base that we forgot to look at."

Edited December 15, 2013 by Raithe

[LadyCrimson]

Sad movie news..

 

Peter O'Tool dies, aged 81.

I loved Lawrence of Arabia and some of this other work, but probably because it was the first time I personally became aware of him, the thing I remember most was the TV mini-series Masada. I was 12 or 13, and it made me cry.

 

I wonder if you can buy that on Amazon or something. *flounces off to look*

[Blarghagh]

 

 

 Never gonna work, and they should've focused on what makes the Hobbit a good novel - Bilbo's adventure. All that other stuff is irrelevant to the story of The Hobbit.

 

Going to have to disagree there. They're literally trying to mortar the bricks of a story that was designed to be read as standalone chapters to kids into a cohesive whole, which is the only way a film of the Hobbit would ever have worked while keeping the content. See the Rankin Bass cartoon, which took the only other workable road of essentially skipping over everything because it is literally impossible to work it into a single narrative. In fact, many of the areas where the story of these movies completely grinds to a halt are classic sequences from the book like the troll encounter or rivendell (even the movie struggles to give them a reason to even go there) or the random spider attack. Adding expectations of modern audiences for what a story related to Lord of the Rings should be, and there is literally no other way to make these films, despite the approach having major flaws. It's what you get when you try to make a film out of a series of bedtime stories.

 

To be completely fair, Tolkien himself tried to do this. He rewrote the Hobbit to be more in step with Lord of the Rings, but he stopped because it didn't feel like The Hobbit anymore. The movies had the opposite problem - if they had tried to make it as is, it wouldn't have felt like Lord of the Rings anymore, which is literally this series of movies' only selling point to anyone except Tolkien's "old-guard" hippie following.

 

EDIT: Quote tunnel removed.

Edited December 15, 2013 by TrueNeutral

[Walsingham]

IMO, the Hobbit would be better rendered as a very long lunch, with anecdotes, than a movie.

[Volourn]

 "Well except Smaug, I absolutely love this arrogant, greedy pompous dragon and I was so happy that they didn't kill him off. His facial expressions, they way he moved and how he played with his prey, best movie dragon so far.  :w00t:"

 

I agree with this. 40 minutes on screen in a long (and entertaining) battle with Smaug the Fiercing killing not even one thing. Pathetic. Yet, I bet at start of next film, he'll mass murder half the town. L0L

 

Some of the characters are prtty good. I think Tauriel is a fantastic character and way better than the other two elves. And, Thorin Oakenshield (the dwarf leader) is absolutely brilliant and is one of the few dwarves in these 6 movies that is a real dwarf's dwarf. Gandalf still remains a big time piece of crap loser. I can't believe anyone likes that horrible shallow filled one note pathetic Merlin wannabe mageling.

[JFSOCC]

 

 

Watched Lady Vengeance.

 

Been watching lots of Asian movies lately and it's a good change. They are usually a bit crazy, at least the ones I watch.

great movie, the entire vengeance trilogy is just so sad

I wonder when Hollywood knows how to make tragedies again, because right now they only know the heroes journey.

 

I finished watching dark angel (tv series) I love season one, the Character of Max is perfect, I don't think there would be anyone who is closer to my perfect woman, but by looks and personality. But the second season ****s it all up, it's plagued by terrible writing, clichéd storylines, exposition dumps, and very out of character dialogue. Seeing a strong woman turned into whiny weak girl was a real shame. Seeing sociopathic characters show feelings and care out of the blue doesn't make any sense. It had some interesting things, but the first season is much better in quality.

The scene where the kids have to invade their old barracks was beautiful, the show should have ended there

 

 

If you want the "finale" , they did 3 novelisations.  Well, one is the story of Max post first escape, up until her arrival in Seattle. The 2nd novel is 1/3 the final episode of season 2, and 2/3 what's going on after, and the 3rd novel wraps up what was actually going on with the weird eugenics cult.

 

Edit: And yes, the 2nd season gets very weird and incredibly plot-holey. I mean, c'mon. One minute they had no idea what any of the escaped group looked like after all this time and the next "oh we've actually had clones of you guys back at base that we forgot to look at."

 

I don't usually care about the novels, I've read too many expanded universe drek of various franchises to still believe they hold much quality. Are these any different?

[Raithe]

 

I don't usually care about the novels, I've read too many expanded universe drek of various franchises to still believe they hold much quality. Are these any different?

 

 

Eh, they're by.. Max Allan Collins, the guy who wrote Road to Perdition. He's done a bunch of movie-novelisations as well. For what they are they aren't bad. There's no major screws loose, but they do follow the season 2 feel more then the season 1 style of Dark Angel. It's more that they flesh out what was actually going on with the cult and answer some of those mysterious hooks and questions. He pretty much crams what the planned "Season 3" arc was to be into one and a  half novels.

 

 

 

It was to bring together the storylines of season 1 (Manticore) and season 2 (ancient blood cult) and reveal the mythology of Dark Angel. As detailed by Charles H. Eglee:

 

Many thousands of years ago, Earth passed through a comet's tail which deposited viral material that killed 97% of the human race. Some people survived that had a genetic predisposition, some kind of antibody or immunity. The great pyramids in Egypt were actually genetic repositories, preserving the DNA of the survivors, built by an ancient blood cult that passed on this genetic immunity to selected members to keep this antibody against the return of the comet (which was due to happen in Season 3). Everybody else would perish, and the members of the cult would inherit the earth and rebuild civilization.

 

Sandeman, Max's creator, jumped from the cult to give this genetic immunity to the rest of humanity, believing that everybody deserved the cure. The other cult members deemed Sandeman a heretic and a threat, undermining their goals of rebuilding humanity in their own image.

 

Max was going to be the savior of the human race. Sandeman finally found out how to give this genetic immunity to everyone through Max. There were multiple ideas of how to spread Max's immunity to humanity, including an air burst that would disperse the antibody through the atmosphere, or attaching the immunity to a common cold virus.

 

 

[JFSOCC]

I am very glad that I didn't get to read that then. Likewise I'm now glad that season 3 did not get made. Thanks. I'll have the happy memories of season 1. some of season 2 wasn't too bad. I did like the introduction of some characters, but I did feel it was a lot less mature.

 

back On Topic, ehh, I did see Ip man 3, it was still BS and not enough kung fu.

[BLOOD_BEAGLE]

Finally got around to watching The World's End the other day.

 

A great film. Easily as funny as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and while the plot maybe wasn't as coherent and satisfying on the first watch I have a feeling it's going to come together a lot more with repeated viewings. Same for its themes and thoroughly ambivalent message about personal growth and happiness.

For now Hot Fuzz is still my favourite but we'll see if that's true after a few trilogy marathons.

[Oerwinde]

Finally got around to watching The World's End the other day.

 

A great film. Easily as funny as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and while the plot maybe wasn't as coherent and satisfying on the first watch I have a feeling it's going to come together a lot more with repeated viewings. Same for its themes and thoroughly ambivalent message about personal growth and happiness.

For now Hot Fuzz is still my favourite but we'll see if that's true after a few trilogy marathons.

Hot Fuzz is still my favorite, but while after watching Worlds End I put it last, as it sinks in its slowly moving passed Shaun of the Dead.

[Amentep]

Sad movie news..

 

Peter O'Tool dies, aged 81.

 

We also lost Joan Fontaine and Tom Laughlin this weekend.

[Raithe]

I mentioned Peter O'Tool had died to someone, and they promptly said "Oh no. Dr Doolittle and 'enry 'iggins!".

 

I wasn't sure whether to slap my forehead, slap them, or just grit my teeth.

[Amentep]

I think Tom Laughlin had a response you could have considered