Movies you've seen recently

[Amentep]

You know 1939 - the "magic" year that many point out as the "best year of Hollywood" had, from a quick glance, 37 sequels.  Possibly more because I'm not as familiar with the budget westerns stars (and I'm not sure whether you count cowboy stars like Gene Autry (3 films) and Roy Rogers (1 film) where they essentially play themselves as sequels or not, as often they're a different "characters" each film or a fictional version of themselves later on) but I did count the Lone Ranger serial sequel and the 5(!) Hopalong Cassidy films of 1939.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Amentep

[Orogun01]

After watching Kingsman last night, I'm down for a sequel. Like 2/3rds of the way through it I was like "This is like an old James Bond movie, but with modern filmmaking... its awesome" Istart watching the special features and Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar are talking about how they came up with it by sitting in a bar talking about how Spy movies are too serious and they wanted to make a fun spy movie like the old James Bond movies but modern.

 

 

One thing that bothered me about Kingsman was that they left a lot of themes unresolved, I guess they wanted to break out of convention but it has a dramatic change of tone towards the final part of the movie. They spent all that time establishing the main character as kindhearted fellow who protects animals and by end he is just blowing everyone apart. I guess he was autistic and not kindhearted.

Plus there is the whole nature of the main's villain plot which leads to believe that the protagonist's kind nature will have some role to play in the future, but nope.

[Raithe]

 

One thing that bothered me about Kingsman was that they left a lot of themes unresolved, I guess they wanted to break out of convention but it has a dramatic change of tone towards the final part of the movie. They spent all that time establishing the main character as kindhearted fellow who protects animals and by end he is just blowing everyone apart. I guess he was autistic and not kindhearted.

Plus there is the whole nature of the main's villain plot which leads to believe that the protagonist's kind nature will have some role to play in the future, but nope.

 

 

Ah, but you have to remember, the main character was English. There's a whole thing about being kind to your dogs, and damsels in distress, while utterly capable of being merciless bastards to the rest of humanity. It's a cultural thing.

[Raithe]

For the actual movie type..

 

Woman in Gold.

 

Ryan Reynolds reminding us that he can do serious, straight roles with depth alongside Helen Mirren. Based on the true story of the aging lady who gets the son of a family friend to take the Austrian government to court to recover a painting that had been stolen from her family by the Nazis.

 

A nicely done piece, that doesn't push the buttons that hard or make something relating to the holocaust gut-wrenching, while still managing to instil a depth of emotion in the proceedings. Plus a fairly good look at the legal battle from what I understand which might interest a few of you lawyer types out there.

[Bartimaeus]

Cinderella (2015).

 

"Cinderella received generally positive reviews from critics." "On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 85% approval rating, based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10." " Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 67 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating 'generally favorable reviews'." "In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, audiences under the age of 18 gave the film an A, aged 18–24 an A-, aged 25–34 an A, and aged 35 and up an A+, on a scale of A+ to F."

 

"The site's critical consensus reads, 'Refreshingly traditional in a revisionist era, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella proves Disney hasn't lost any of its old-fashioned magic.'" "[...]anyone nostalgic for childhood dreams of transformation will find something to enjoy in an uplifting movie that invests warm sentiment in universal themes of loss and resilience, experience and maturity." "Scott Mendelson of Forbes admired the film's visual effects, production design, and called the costume design as Oscar-worthy, adding, 'with an emphasis on empathy and empowerment, Walt Disney's Cinderella is the best film yet in their 'turn our animated classics into live-action blockbuster' subgenre.'"

 

I have been mislead. I was assuming that Cinderella would be, at the very least, palatable...perhaps even half decent. Maybe I would actually really enjoy it. I didn't, and it was none of these things. From cringe-worthy beginning to cringe-worthy end, I hated the movie and detested the perfect, beautiful Cinderella and her perfect, beautiful prince. I understand that the Cinderella story is supposed to be the traditional fairy tale princess story...but this was bad. Not quite Alice levels of bad, but...I would have to be paid to see it again. Now, I'm not going to say how MUCH I would need to be paid (because I'm greedy and pragmatic), but I would need to be paid SOMEthing, alright? Cate Blanchett was probably the best part of this movie...but even she suffered the problem as did the entire movie: overdramatic theatrics and overselling their parts. There's oh so painfully little subtlety with any of the characters, with the two selfish stepsisters probably somehow having the most out of all the characters. Cinderella and her prince (and her father and her real mother) were all nauseatingly and overbearingly good and perfect. I didn't relate to a single one of these characters at pretty much any point throughout the movie...and having watched Frozen recently and become a big fan (even with Frozen's problems withstanding), you think I'd be able to, but I couldn't...I just couldn't.

 

Helena Bonham Carter's part in the movie was absolutely atrocious, with her irritatingly soft voice and constant tittering and theatrics...I don't know why she was even in the movie at all. The Prince's "new" scenes (compared to the original cartoon) were absolutely dreadful, going on and on about swordfighting and painting and marriage and...ugh, it was just terribly boring and...meaningless. If his additional parts were supposed to make me be able to relate more with him than in the original cartoon, they really only had the opposite effect.

 

Really, the biggest problem of this movie is Cinderella herself, though: I have the exact same problem with her that I had with Aurora in Maleficent. There's no subtlety in the slightest to her character: she is the perfect, good little girl, with such overstated and we're-gonna-drill-this-through-your-head humility and innocence, that I just find myself unable to like her in the slightest. Every single thing they say and do is done with such an air of inherent perfectness and goodliness and naive innocence...I just can't hack it. Aurora and Cinderella were not very complex characters in their respective movies: this much is absolutely true. However, nor were they usually these manufactured...sweet little portraits of perfection who smack you over the head with their goodliness every chance they can get, either. Cinderella's "worst" act throughout the entire movie was having an entire two seconds of self-pity by saying to the prince, "I am no-one of importance," when he asked for her name, and then refusing to tell him. Pfah.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Amentep]

While I thought CINDERELLA wasn't as strong a Live Action working of the fairy tale as some of the others have been - there certainly was room to have improved the narrative - I'm not exactly sure why making her have "worse" acts would be an improvement.  Did she need to shank someone in the back to be taken seriously as a character?  I just don't get it, I guess.

[Bartimaeus]

No, not at all. The problem wasn't that she was a good character (ok, maybe it's a little bit of the problem, as Mary Jane characters aren't usually that relatable to, but...there are different degrees of Mary Jane, ok): the problem was that the film makers were hitting you upside the head with her goodliness at every possible opportunity they're presented, and it got really old really fast. It was like that to very end...where I was hoping - or really, I was PRAYING - that as she was leaving the house with the prince, she wouldn't say anything to her stepsisters or stepmother...just leave, and let them go, as you should. But no, her character had to go that extra mile to be that much more perfect, as she had been doing the rest of the previous hour and half of the movie, and she told them (well, the stepmother at least) that she forgave them. There's being a genuinely wonderful person whose qualities we can appreciate...and then there's being an extreme Mary Jane case who the writer(s) force into being perfect in every way they're presenting the character in virtually every moment they're on screen...whose pure, unabating goodness defy our suspension of disbelief. There's no real sense of taste or subtlety or restraint in how she's portrayed.

 

If anyone's ever read any of the absolutely dreadful Rhapsody: Child of Blood series by Elizabeth Haydon (that book in particular being the worst book I've ever read the entirety of in my entire life thanks to the recommendation of a friend), Rhapsody and Cinderella are the same character. No thank you, I am good.

 

(e): coherency

 

(e): Although the idea of Cinderella shanking somebody does have desirable qualities, I must admit...

Edited June 23, 2015 by Bartimaeus

[Amentep]

Yeah I actually wrote a different scenario and I thought "you know that might work" so decided it made a terrible example shortened it to a simple shanking.

 

Anyhow, I didn't think that Cinderella was perfect (if she was she'd have managed to circumvent a lot of the problems by having the Prince know her).  I did think that her approach to being positive and forgiving tied heavily into what was established in the prologue from her mom and despite the Step-mother and the step-sisters insistance that she "wise up" and change to get what she wanted, she was ultimately vindicated in a way that says in a general sense "be yourself and you'll succeed".  If she'd used the kind of behaviors her step-sisters would have it would have violated the "be true to yourself" theme, IMO.

[Malcador]

Mortal Kombat Annihilation. That was a ill-conceived plan. At least I found another movie Ajax acted in.

[Amentep]

James Remar (Ajax in The Warriors) is in tonnes of films.  He had a small role in RED which I watched over the weekend.

 

He was also horribly miscast as Raiden (even moreso that Christopher Lambert).

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah I actually wrote a different scenario and I thought "you know that might work" so decided it made a terrible example shortened it to a simple shanking.

 

Anyhow, I didn't think that Cinderella was perfect (if she was she'd have managed to circumvent a lot of the problems by having the Prince know her).  I did think that her approach to being positive and forgiving tied heavily into what was established in the prologue from her mom and despite the Step-mother and the step-sisters insistance that she "wise up" and change to get what she wanted, she was ultimately vindicated in a way that says in a general sense "be yourself and you'll succeed".  If she'd used the kind of behaviors her step-sisters would have it would have violated the "be true to yourself" theme, IMO.

I guess I don't disagree with your points...but I still found the entire movie unbearable.

[ShadySands]

Not really enthused at Tom Holland being tapped for Spidey

[Hurlshort]

Not really enthused at Tom Holland being tapped for Spidey

 

I have no idea who the kid is.  But I liked Garfield.

[kgambit]

 

Not really enthused at Tom Holland being tapped for Spidey

 

I have no idea who the kid is.  But I liked Garfield.

 

 

Newcomer on the acting scene.  Born in 1996 - played Cromwell's son Gregory in Wolf Hall  and Lucas in The Impossible.   

[Sarex]

 

For the spate of sequilitis news and rumours.. 

 

139 Movie Sequels currently in the works..

 

And for a selection of:

 

Daaaaaaamn...

[Gfted1]

Omg, Spaceballs 2!   That would be glorious but not gonna happen for the reason described. If he wont come back for Ghostbusters, hes not coming back for this.

[ManifestedISO]

Not really enthused at Tom Holland being tapped for Spidey

 

I'm not picking up what they're putting down either, but the word is Tom got the part in large part based on his chemistry with RDJ. 

[Raithe]

You have to admit, Jackson does tend to pick films for the mix of fun he'll have and the steady pay check...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR-0mwLXiow

[kirottu]

I went to see Terminator Genisys yesterday and it was a pleasant summer popcorn flick. Every scene with Arnold was awesome, but others not so much. Better than the last two Terminator movies.

[Oerwinde]

I went to see Terminator Genisys yesterday and it was a pleasant summer popcorn flick. Every scene with Arnold was awesome, but others not so much. Better than the last two Terminator movies.

I'll have to check it out. Salvation was my favourite Terminator movie, so if its better I'm definitely interested

Edited June 27, 2015 by Oerwinde

[kirottu]

I'm not a fan of Salvation. Almost all the John Connor parts felt off somehow.

[Gromnir]

You have to admit, Jackson does tend to pick films for the mix of fun he'll have and the steady pay check...

 

 

am recalling that Gene Hackman, an academy award winning actor known for his serious roles (save for a tiny bit-part in Young Frankenstein) was asked why he played lex luthor in the 1978 superman movie. were an interview contemporaneous with release o' the film that posed the question.  hackman kinda shrugged and said something to the effect that the film's producers came to his house with a dump truck full o' money... wasn't a hard choice at all. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Oerwinde]

I'm not a fan of Salvation. Almost all the John Connor parts felt off somehow.

 

I would have loved it if they kept the original ending with John Connor dying and them putting his face on Marcus's body and him taking over as leader of the resistance.

[Raithe]

 

You have to admit, Jackson does tend to pick films for the mix of fun he'll have and the steady pay check...

 

 

am recalling that Gene Hackman, an academy award winning actor known for his serious roles (save for a tiny bit-part in Young Frankenstein) was asked why he played lex luthor in the 1978 superman movie. were an interview contemporaneous with release o' the film that posed the question.  hackman kinda shrugged and said something to the effect that the film's producers came to his house with a dump truck full o' money... wasn't a hard choice at all. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I think Michael Caine's response is still one of the best. He went through that period of showing up in some seriously dire movies, and when asked if he has seen any of them he turned around and did "No. But I have seen the house they let me buy."

[Keyrock]

I watched Last Action Hero again for the first time in 20 years.  I definitely disagree with all the hate the movie got.  Sure, the kid was terrible, but in many ways, the movie was pretty damn brilliant.  Like, really brilliant.  I kind of think it was ahead of its time.  It was meta before meta was a thing.  Also, Charles Dance was amazing.  But then, Charles Dance is always amazing.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Keyrock