Movie Reviews 2.0
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
I've just returned from watching the Avengers and enjoyed it. As with pretty much all comic-book based stories, there are inherent limitations but it was very well done.
I'd give it an 8 out of 10. Hopefully the various sequels which will no doubt be released in future years will be as entertaining!
I'd give it an 8 out of 10. Hopefully the various sequels which will no doubt be released in future years will be as entertaining!
This. Non stop action, some great one liners, it's everything a comic book should be on the big screen.
WhiningKhan
Regular
MIB3 was quite enjoyable, a definite improvement from the second movie. No real surprises on any front, a dependably fun summer movie.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Just seen Haywire and liked it a lot. It's a more considered spy/action movie as you'd expect from Soderbergh, with a forwards/backwards narration much like Soderbergh's Ocean's movies.
Gina Carano is great, really believable when she throws a punch, a surprisingly good actress with real screen presence. She's totally solid and believable in a fight, and looks terrific in a little black dress. More surprising is that she's so attractive on screen, considering her day job involves a lot of being hit in the face.
Carano's Mallory Kane makes Angelina Jolie's Salt look totally anaemic and confused in comparison. Ewan MacGregor's american accent is, as always, pretty poor, and you'll see several famous faces putting in short appearances as supporting characters.
Gina Carano is great, really believable when she throws a punch, a surprisingly good actress with real screen presence. She's totally solid and believable in a fight, and looks terrific in a little black dress. More surprising is that she's so attractive on screen, considering her day job involves a lot of being hit in the face.
Carano's Mallory Kane makes Angelina Jolie's Salt look totally anaemic and confused in comparison. Ewan MacGregor's american accent is, as always, pretty poor, and you'll see several famous faces putting in short appearances as supporting characters.
I loved King Kong, apart from three scenes that were way too long. One, the dino chase sequence. Realistically, everyone involved ought to have been crushed to a pulp inside of ten, twenty seconds tops. Yet it goes on for what, two, three minutes? I'm not sure. Way, way too long anyhow.
Second, the capture of Kong. Overly long and way overly melodramatic.
Third, death of Kong. Yeah, we know it's meant to be a sad scene, but it becomes too much when it goes on and on and on, on top of the capture sequence.
Juicious use of the editor's scissors, snip-snip, and the movie would have been better off for it. As for the rest, I love the mystique, the misty sense of wonder given by the period nature of the film itself, underscored by James Newton Howard's awesome music. The actors are all good, even Jack Black strangely enough, and also Kong himself. The Kong vs. 3x gigantic T-Rexes stand out - in my mind at least - as one of the greatest and most imaginative action sequences of all time, and I also love the Central Park dream-like sequence. Very sentimental, in a positive sense. In my mind anyway.
Oh, and I also watched Prometheus today. It was alright, worth the money but doesn't stand out as an all-time greatest movie in my mind. It wasn't as much a horror movie as mostly just gore and grossness, there were a few creepy scenes, but you could count them on the fingers of one hand, and they weren't particularly scary, or even tense for the most part. Nothing like the original Alien, or Cameron's Aliens, which both scared the heck out of me when I saw them in my early/mid-teens...
It was technically very well done of course, as might be expected. Hardly any dodgy effects work, the sets look great; not as grimy as the original movies (but you wouldn't expect that either in this particular case), but still very recognizable as belonging to the Alien universe.
Possible spoilers ahead, so avert your eyes if you care:
What I didn't really like was having a very creepy android named David (who turns out to be quite psychotic) with roughly the same timbre of voice as H.A.L of "2001" fame, whose other main character was named Dave. That is a rather too strong a connection in my view, and hints in a much too un-subtle way of what is yet to come. I don't think anyone watching that movie doesn't suspect David right from the start, unlike the case with Ash in the original Alien, whose only suspect moves early on in the movie is the strange jog he does before settling in at his post, watching Dallas and crew head off to the alien ship, and his eerie calmness about the whole situation once people start dying.
Also, the Space Jockey didn't die in the pilot's seat like he was supposed to, so he could be found by said Dallas and crew. I assume this is a direct precursor to the movie Alien, where they find the Jockey in his armor, at his seat. Else this was not the same ship as found in that movie, but that seems weird too. I find this a discrepancy in the continuity.
Also, David seems to have knowledge of what the contents of the bottles he recovered from the store room would do to human beings. Where did he gather that information from, or did he just guess? I don't think so, based on his dialogue. This is another discrepancy, in plot this time, perhaps explained by cut scenes that will appear on the blu-ray director's cut release or something...
This isn't even the same planet. LV-223 here, LV-426 there.
The movie itself has a lot of other problems, with its lack of internal logic, character development, and explaining anything properly. No surprise, considering the script was rewritten by Damon Lindelof of Lost fame. It's also stuffed with useless cultural references - while mostly ignoring all the classical sci-fi work about creation and evolution and such from the past decades.
One possible answer is that whatever happened 2000 years ago, one of the Engineers managed to get to a ship and leave the planet - but already with some sort of an Alien creature on board that managed to catch him unguarded. So he crash landed on that other planet and then the queen was born - which in turn layed thousands of eggs before dying too.
The movie itself has a lot of other problems, with its lack of internal logic, character development, and explaining anything properly. No surprise, considering the script was rewritten by Damon Lindelof of Lost fame. It's also stuffed with useless cultural references - while mostly ignoring all the classical sci-fi work about creation and evolution and such from the past decades.
RobertR1:
Yeah, I'd say you can watch this movie just on its own.
Discussion of Prometheus - may include plot and spoilers - below:
Yeah, I'd say you can watch this movie just on its own.
Discussion of Prometheus - may include plot and spoilers - below:
Wow. Okay... What a waste of an opportunity then! I thought this would be a genuine prequel, explaining how it all started.
Hm, didn't have much problems with that, other than failure to anchor the movie in the existing Alien timeline, or explaining exactly which goddamn planet they were going to...
Hm, I haven't seen all of Lost (only up to and including third season), but I found it a rather interesting show actually. No idea who wrote those scripts, though...
Must have totally missed those references, other than the blindingly obvious H.A.L walking around on two legs. Not sure what works of creation and evolution you want the script to pay homage to; I believe movies are generally better off if they're not bound and fettered by past works in the same or similar genres.
Spoiler again,
But this is a nice analysis of the movie, that tries to explain most of the movie:
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
Too bad that a LOT of it is just the viewer's speculation, especially about the black liquid.
But this is a nice analysis of the movie, that tries to explain most of the movie:
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html
Too bad that a LOT of it is just the viewer's speculation, especially about the black liquid.
I watched it yesterday, great film. The intro with the waterfall scene and space ship was very cool, was that CGI? Very interesting ending, may leave room for a sequel. The film has great pacing too. I thought the cast was going to be lame but they were ok.
After watching Prometheus got home and watched the US version of Girl with Dragon Tatoo on Blu-ray, damn what a slow ass movie, didn't know what all the hype was about....oh wait it was about the porn scenes...lol. Stupid ending too.
After watching Prometheus got home and watched the US version of Girl with Dragon Tatoo on Blu-ray, damn what a slow ass movie, didn't know what all the hype was about....oh wait it was about the porn scenes...lol. Stupid ending too.
Prometheus was full of CG, set extensions, spaceships, creatures... even though most of the creatures had practical versions (suits and animatronics) most of it wasn't working well enough and had to be replaced with CG.
I'm sure there's going to be a lot of behind the scenes articles during the next week, fxguide for example is promising a lot of material, and fortunately they're quite thorough as well.
I'm sure there's going to be a lot of behind the scenes articles during the next week, fxguide for example is promising a lot of material, and fortunately they're quite thorough as well.
Wow.
It is an interesting read but he is running with his theory in ways I doubt are intentional. Psychic fluid? We have no hints that this is the case at all.
The various forms created all depend on the life form touched by the fluid and the level of exposure. Completely immerse a worm in the fluid and you get the 'friendly' beasties we saw doing over Millburn and co. (Which is why we got the shots of the worms in the soil inside the Urn chamber.) Infect with a small amount and you get rapid mutation of the existing form. Drink a large amount and you get the same rapid mutation but sufficiently severe that it kills the drinker.
Heavy contact produces an organism with certain common characteristics. Fairly aggressive to the point of ecocidal virulence, translucent outer layers of skin (probably polarised silicon) and a penchant for acidic blood. This fits quite nicely with a bio-weapon that when dropped into an existing ecology proceeds to produce adapted warriors that rapidly decimate pretty much everything else.
But tailor it in smaller amounts and you get something that forces the DNA of whatever consumed it to recombine rapidly usually at the cost of that organism as it dismantles itself.
Most of this is laid out pretty explicitly in the film. While I agree the film has motifs of sacrifice he clearly is running with his theory a bit more than the film ever even implies.
For the record I quite enjoyed the film. I could have done without the last 'birthing' scene at the end of the film. It seemed to over-state things a bit more than was needed. Also I strongly suspect there are quite a few scenes left of the cutting room floor that give the secondary characters a bit more life. It seems like these have been trimmed for film length and possibly pacing reasons.
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