Movies you've seen recently

[Darkpriest]

Watched the latest Hobbit recently.

 

Hobbit really lacks some memorable characters, sometimes they have their moments, but unlike LotR the Hobbit movie did not deliver on showing the "sauce" of the characters.

 

The movie has it moments though. I really liked the entry of the dwarves and the initial opening by the warboar riding leader I also liked seeing dwarves in actual battle as it was first and last time we actually saw them in the whole series. Also, headbutting armored orcs is 100% legit if you are a dwarf :D

 

I liked the movie, but I am sad, that the most memorable parts of it will be the battle at Dol Guldur and the shield wall formation of the dwarves with the initial clash.

[Blarghagh]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Aside from completely screwing up their origins and connection to April, it wasn't bad at all.

 

I watched this too. It was surprisingly not horrific. In fact, it kinda won me over around the end. I mean, even with all that origin stuff they messed up, they got the personalities of the turtles mostly right and that's really the core.

 

I also watched The Boxtrolls which was some lovely claymation. Had a couple of great laughs, a decent story and a hilariously despicable villain.

[CoM_Solaufein]

I think the obvious problem of the Hobbit movies isn't that they stretched one book to three movies, it's that they filmed two movies and stretched those two into three movies. The structure doesn't work. Every movie ends and starts at weird places, like it was just randomly cut. It's obvious that it was written and filmed to a movie of the journey (Misty Mountains, Mirkwood) and a movie of the mountain (Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies). Still, while the other movies had lots of bloat, this one was missing things. Why did the first movie give us 10 minutes of Radagast healing a hedgehog but this movie only has 30 seconds of Beorn and Legolas steals his big moment?

Probably should have been two movies. Smaug's demise at the beginning of the film was anti-climatic. That should have happened at the end of the other movie. There are also a lot of slow periods in the movie which is a killer. You have to keep the movie moving in a nice flow to keep the audience's attention.

[Raithe]

Okay, this looks like it's going to be a gloriously bad enjoyable viewing...

 

http://youtu.be/SZ2628TiTyw

[Valsuelm]

I actually looked this one up as I almost couldn't believe it was real; thought maybe it was a spoof trailer.

 

It looks bad, which is a shame too because there's so much potential for a good movie about the Silk Road, but I'll see it, and only because it's got John Cusack in it. He's one of a small handful of actors I'll give anything he's in a watch.

 

Here's to hoping the trailer isn't doing it justice and it's the next Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Edited December 27, 2014 by Valsuelm

[Raithe]

Sex and Death 101

 

A quirky little tale of drama, comedy and romance. Simon Baker as a man who in the days before his marriage, receives an email containing a list of the 29 women he's slept with...and a further 72 names he will have sex with in the future. While he first goes into crisis mode over it, then enjoys it, he quickly finds it leaving him feeling quite the odd man out.

At the same time Winona Ryder is a slightly gothic femme fatale "serial killer" who keeps putting her victims (various misogynistic men) into chemically induced comas.

 

It is a strange little film, with some interesting turns, some good lines, nice performances, and some chuckles. But it can't really fit into a good description. Not quite deep enough for the drama, a bit too jaded  for the romance, and it's not a laugh every five minutes for an outright comedy.

 

I'd class it as enjoyable, but you need to be in the right frame of mind to get into it.

[Oerwinde]

 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Aside from completely screwing up their origins and connection to April, it wasn't bad at all.

 

I watched this too. It was surprisingly not horrific. In fact, it kinda won me over around the end. I mean, even with all that origin stuff they messed up, they got the personalities of the turtles mostly right and that's really the core.

 

I also watched The Boxtrolls which was some lovely claymation. Had a couple of great laughs, a decent story and a hilariously despicable villain.

 

 

Yeah, all the Origin stuff was at the beginning, so by the end its mostly forgotten with all the cool action and turtle humour. Shredder didn't even suck as much as he looked like he would in the trailers. My 3 year old turtle fanatic was going ape over the whole thing, except he was adamant that it wasn't Splinter, because Splinter is a rat, not a pig. Sequel reportedly has Bebop and Rocksteady, so I'll probably bring him to see that when it comes out.

[Felonious]

I think the obvious problem of the Hobbit movies isn't that they stretched one book to three movies, it's that they filmed two movies and stretched those two into three movies. The structure doesn't work. Every movie ends and starts at weird places, like it was just randomly cut. It's obvious that it was written and filmed to a movie of the journey (Misty Mountains, Mirkwood) and a movie of the mountain (Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies). Still, while the other movies had lots of bloat, this one was missing things. Why did the first movie give us 10 minutes of Radagast healing a hedgehog but this movie only has 30 seconds of Beorn and Legolas steals his big moment?

 

I found that my biggest problem with the Hobbit movies were the sheer amount of changes that Peter Jackson made to the source material.  In the LotR movies, it's understood that they had to leave out certain persons/details or else it would have taken a half-dozen movies to cover it all correctly; in the Hobbit movies, that shouldn't be a problem, as the source material itself required ample "padding" in order to stretch it out to 3 movies, yet Jackson makes unnecessary and on occassion what seems like rushed changes all the same that actually take away from the Hobbit experience.  Beorn could have been much more fleshed out as a character and was a far more important part of the final Battle than the 15 seconds he was given in the movie and that's just one example.  I loved the LotR movies; I was disappointed thoroughly by the Hobbit movies.

[Raithe]

As someone I read pointed out, Tolkien tended to put a lot of "Tell, not Show" in the bits around his stories.  With the change in media, Jackson tends to turn all of those short "Tell" into rather long "Show" instead.

 

Collectively, I've found the three Hobbit films have all had their good points, but I don't think they're quite as fluid as the LoTR trilogy happened to be.

[Blarghagh]

Very true, even in the Lord of the Rings novel a lot of things are told after they happened. Interestingly, Tolkien once tried to rewrite The Hobbit to be more in tune with the The Lord of the Rings and supposedly a lot of those notes ended up in these films. I'd be interested to see how many of these changes Tolkien intended to make himself before he decided to nix the idea entirely.

[Walsingham]

The Hobbit was the first book I ever read. I taught myself to read in order to read that book.

 

Jackson has done a bloody good job.

[HoonDing]

Okay, this looks like it's going to be a gloriously bad enjoyable viewing...

 

http://youtu.be/SZ2628TiTyw

That reminds me: I should see the one with Cage and Christensen.

Edited December 29, 2014 by HoonDing

[ShadySands]

TMNT- I didn't hate it and it wasn't overlong so there's that. I didn't mind the origin changes that much either but that damn huge snowy mountain a short drive outside of Manhattan was driving me crazy

 

 

Also

Edited December 29, 2014 by ShadySands

[Oerwinde]

TMNT- I didn't hate it and it wasn't overlong so there's that. I didn't mind the origin changes that much either but that damn huge snowy mountain a short drive outside of Manhattan was driving me crazy

 

 

Also

 

Lots of talk that he'll be Black Bolt, which I'm torn on. On one hand he's an imposing dude, on the other he hardly looks Regal, and playing a character that doesn't talk would be a waste. Maybe he'd be better as Gorgon?

[Orogun01]

Vin Diesel as Black Bolt; a non speaking role. Perfect!

[LadyCrimson]

Vin Diesel as Black Bolt; a non speaking role. Perfect!

It's funny because I think he does really well in his voice-over animated work. But his live-action stuff, I could often do without him opening his mouth. True of many action-dudes, really, outside of the occasional one-liners.

[Woldan]

Master and Commander. I love huge sail boats and this movie is a masterpiece.

[Orogun01]

 

Vin Diesel as Black Bolt; a non speaking role. Perfect!

It's funny because I think he does really well in his voice-over animated work. But his live-action stuff, I could often do without him opening his mouth. True of many action-dudes, really, outside of the occasional one-liners.

 

He was the Iron Giant and Groot, not the most eloquent of characters. 

[LadyCrimson]

He was the Iron Giant and Groot, not the most eloquent of characters.

True enough, but those grunts and few words felt right for the chr./made me like the chr. and were full of feeling! ...and in both cases, I didn't realize it was him until much later. Maybe they alter the voice in post-production a bit.

 

I think it's often less the voice itself and more the immobile face that often goes with it.

[Gfted1]

Tammy. I wasn't expecting to like it as Im not a huge fan of Melissa McCarthy but she pulls off a sympathetic character and there are several laughs.

[Hurlshort]

I watched a couple episodes of Inside the American Mob on Netflix, it is a fantastic documentary.

[Oerwinde]

Divergent. Why did no one kill the snooty intellectual chick? Pretty sure her murder of hundreds of others justified it.

[LadyCrimson]

The past few nights I keep thinking I'll try "The Maze Runner," even tho it looks pretty YA silly, but each time I sit down on the couch, the cable VoD function suddenly ceases to work for 10-15 minutes ("sorry, service unavailable, reboot unit or try again later") and by the time it works again I'm off doing something else.

 

Perhaps the movie gods are trying to tell me something.

[ManifestedISO]

Haha, you are literally a cat in human form. 

[LadyCrimson]

"Time to watch this movie I've been wanting to see for ages!"

"...is that a loose thread? STRING!"