Movies you've seen recently

[sorophx]

both are awesome. I'd love to see more action movies with them in principal roles 

[Bokishi]

Fury Road!

[CoM_Solaufein]

Mad Max Fury Road. Good movie. Should have been made in Australia though. That African desert was rather bland and boring. At least in Australia there would be some green and they could have made sets of destroyed towns or cities.

[ManifestedISO]

John Wick, finally. Always wondered what the difference between revenge and avenge is ... still not sure. Keanu was pretty great, though. Russian dog-killers, what's not to hate. 

 

Thought maybe his wife was the brunette looker from Blue Bloods, still not sure. 

[Sarex]

Russian dog-killers, what's not to hate.

 

Well them being Russian, I hope.

[Oerwinde]

Always wondered what the difference between revenge and avenge is

 

Pretty sure revenge is taking retribution for something done to yourself, and avenge is taking retribution for something done to someone else.

[Bartimaeus]

Avenge has much more positive connotations than revenge, though, which is weird, because in a lot of cases, there's not really much functional difference between the two.

[Raithe]

Revenge tends to be a very personal thing, Avenge generally seems to be more of something done on behalf of someone else.

 

Or is that just me?

[Bartimaeus]

Functionally, they're essentially the same, though. When you're "avenging" somebody, it's usually because you feel as though that person has been wronged...and for whatever reasons, you've become personally offended and wronged yourself through them - enough so that you've decided to take it upon yourself to "avenge" that wronged person. The supposed underlying reasoning is different, but the thing actually motivating you is the same exact thing: an injustice has affected you in one way or another, and you're going to try and right it in whatever way you deem necessary.

 

Revenge and avenging are pretty much completely interchangeable in the case of, to take a very generic fictional example, trying to enforce justice on the behalf of...slain loved ones or something. This is an extreme example, but you can apply the same idea to pretty much any "avenging" scenario.

 

I find it annoying that there's no noun version of "avenge"...and that there's no verb version of "revenge" or "vengeance". What's up with that?

Edited May 18, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Blarghagh]

Some of you guys may have seen this, the recently restored 1980 Fantasy short film Black Angel. It played before Empire Strikes Back in movie theatres. After that, it disappeared and the negatives were lost. Somehow they turned up again and the director restored it:

 

 

I didn't think it was great, but it had beautiful locations. Some old school fantasy stuff. Reminded me a little of Excalibur.

[imadaman]

Last movie I've seen?
Hmm... I think it was Assassins the other night and I found it very nice.
I loved the... chemistry/byplay (the closest words I could think of that mean the interaction) between Banderas' (he's 54? How did that happen?) and Stallone's characters, and my favourite part in the movie was when Banderas' character was waiting for Stallone's to exit a bank for hours.

[Calax]

The 1989 Punisher film, Fury Road and Starship Troopers with the GF.

 

And Punisher War Zone by myself. Honestly I can see why War Zone doesn't work with the critics. I imagine that if it had been a higher valued production like Fury Road it would have been a much better received film by mainstream. Although that would have taken away the fun kitch value of the thing "Yummy yummy yummy in my tummy tummy tummy"

[Oerwinde]

War Zone is easily the best Punisher movie. Its exactly what a Punisher movie should be.

[Orogun01]

War Zone is easily the best Punisher movie. Its exactly what a Punisher movie should be.

I agree, in various aspects it feels closer to the comics plus Ray Stevenson is a dead ringer for Castle. Looks matter to me when it comes to comic book movies.

 

I also enjoyed Thomas Jane's Castle though.

[Volourn]

Thomas Jane = Best Punisher.  That should have got a sequel.

[ShadySands]

[Oerwinde]

Thomas Jane = Best Punisher. That should have got a sequel.

If he had been in War Zone instead of the cheesy revenge flick he was in it would have blown minds. I liked him as Frank better, but his movie wasn't as good.

[ktchong]

Just came back from Tomorrowland.  A good action-adventure sci-fi  movie... spoiled by a very creepy romantic scene.

 

SPOILER:

 

In the movie, George Clooney's character, Frank, was recruited into Tomorrowland as a child by an android that appeared as a little girl, Athena.  They fell in love since he was a child, but the problem was she could never grow up.  "Mentally" she had matured, but she was stuck in the body of a little girl.  So Frank resented Athena for being just a "program" and "tricking" him. 

 

Athena is actually a major character. She is really the character that sets everything in motion.  She actually has more screen time than George Clooney, (given that different ages of Frank were played by different actors while she stays the same age,) and she has a lot of action and fight scenes. She is actually the best thing in the movie.  She reminds me of the archetypical female robot character in Japanese anime and manga. (Actually, the entire movie felt like an anime... Japan will love this movie.)

 

 

Here is a big problem in the movie:  in the final big action scene, Athena sacrificed herself to save Frank.  In her final moment, there is an "emotional" scene in they finally admitted their love for each other, and Frank carrying Athena's dying body (which was set to self-destruct) to destroy a particular location.  The scene was performed by 10-, 11- or 12-year-old girl and the 50-something-year-old Clooney.  That scene felt really awkward, super creepy, and very uncomfortable.

 

(And then she died - and was not resurrected or put into a body in the end.  I thought Athena would reappear in a new body as an adult woman at the end... did not happen. She stayed dead. Which was surprising for a Disney movie.)

 

Another problem:

 

Most of the movie takes place in our world outside Tomorrowland.  The first and second acts of the movie keep building up the expectations of what an amazing place Tomorrowland is.  The first two acts only show glimpses of Tomorrowland.  We do not get to see Tomorrowland until the final and third acts.  When Frank, Athena and Casey finally reach Tomorrowland, (which is near the end of the movie,) the place is mostly abandoned, decaying and crumbling - because the Governor has exiled everyone who stood up against him.  The actual Tomorrowland turns out to be a disappointment.  Our expectations of all those wonders are  not met.

 

Still a good movie, though.

Edited May 23, 2015 by ktchong

[Oerwinde]

Inequality For All, documentary on income inequality. Interesting data on how rising inequality coincided with lowered union power, lower education funding, and lower taxes on the rich, all of which began in Reagan's presidency. (last point was alluded to but not explicitly stated in the film). Based on the work of Robert Reich, secretary of labour for Bill Clinton, who stars in and narrates the film.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Oerwinde

[ShadySands]

Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Legend Of Conan Will Be Brutal Sequel, Bringing Back Some Original Cast

 

I'm so happy I could do something to express my happiness

[Amentep]

TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY (1998) - I have a soft spot for this film; the end is a bit anti-climactic, but its a fun pulpy adventure for much of it (in its way a lot like the later Tarzan stories).

 

HARPER (1966) Paul Newman plays a private eye hired to find a missing rich guy.  His family only seem moderately interested in finding him, and there are some parties really strongly interested in him not being found.  Its very funny in places, and yet also manages a real brutality; oddly it manages both well - something most films fail to do.  Great turns by the cast (including Robert Wagner, Shelly Winters, Julie Harris and Lauren Becall, amid others).  The end is a complete subversion of the hardboiled detective genre.

 

POLTERGEIST (2015) - Weak remake of the original; it doesn't manage to be scary on its own (its best moments are expansions of ideas from the original) and it swaps the the mostly non-existant older daughter for a characterless younger daughter.  The opening 30 minutes is a paint-by-the-numbers family in conflict handled so poorly it elicited laughter (when the broke dad beats up his steering wheel in frustration like you've seen in countless other films, you realize the film has nothing new to say.  When it shows the other side and it looks like a poorly realized video game, you realize the film has nothing new to show you either.  And Jared Harris is an imminently likeable actor, but he's no Zelda Rubinstein.

 

POLTERGEIST (1982) - The film is really well done; there's a lot of effort to create an interesting family but to also telegraph how the characters will react through the film - whether its the mother smoking pot turning into her "New Age" embrace of the early, benign poltergeist phenomena, or the older teen heavily invested in her social life becoming less present when things go south at home, there's a natural, believable element to how the story and characters unfold.  When things go south, it makes sense for the family to deal with it the way they do.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Amentep

[Raithe]

And on the remake news.. Point Break trailer just got released.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncvFAm4kYCo

 

Snerk.

 

 

Today’s fill of ‘90s nostalgia comes courtesy of the first trailer for the Point Break remake—a remake of the Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze led action thriller about a crew of bank robbers and the FBI agent who goes deep undercover to catch them.

 

The bank-robbing antagonists of the original Point Break were a gang of surfers — sufficiently extreme for the ’90s, perhaps, but obviously not wild enough for the upcoming remake. 2015’s Point Break’s villains are surfers, sure, but as the first trailer shows, they’re also dirtbikers, snowboarders, wingsuiters, BASE jumpers, and partiers. Just in case you weren’t convinced of their extreme-itude, some of them have even have tattoos.

 

Starring in the updated extreme sports-loving remake are Edgar Ramirez as Bodhi (Swayze’s character), Luke Bracey as Johnny Utah (Reeves character), in addition to Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies), Ray Winstone, and Delroy Lindo.

 

 

[Gfted1]

The Wedding Ringer

 

Its okay with a few lol's.

[Nonek]

Some of you guys may have seen this, the recently restored 1980 Fantasy short film Black Angel. It played before Empire Strikes Back in movie theatres. After that, it disappeared and the negatives were lost. Somehow they turned up again and the director restored it:

 

 

I didn't think it was great, but it had beautiful locations. Some old school fantasy stuff. Reminded me a little of Excalibur.

 

Absolutely fascinating, the gentleman certainly captures a certain style of cinematography, that one can see in the films he worked on.

 

Edit: Personally I thought that the best Punisher adaptation was the video game using Mr Thomas Jane's vocal talents, better than all three of the films in my opinion.

[Hurlshort]

The Point Break remake looks terrible.