Movie Reviews 2.0

[Pressure]

The Fall

Saw 'The Fall' (2006) yesterday and really liked it.

The synopsis is:

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the tale advances.

You can catch it on Netflix. Much better than the trash Hollywood spews out at the moment. The cinematography is beautiful.

 

[Malo]

Watched The Signal (2007) on the weekend. Highly enjoyable "zombie" movie (more your 28 days rage induced zombie than classic) with 3 different points of view of the story. Not really knowing what to expect (I prefer keeping myself in the dark about movies, other than reading brief synopsis on imdb and going over a couple of spoiler-less reviews), I found it well paced with excellent script. Was actually a really good laugh during the 2nd story. The ending was a bit poor though, a bit derived.

edit: Calling it a "zombie" flick isn't really very accurate as the signal affected people in different ways, which is what the movie is about. But the primary result is enhancing violent behavior, and thus a rage virus type killer ala 28 days.

 

[rendezvous]

I saw Resident Evil: Retribution this weekend. It was a bad movie, it lacked a lot in the story department.
Felt like 95 minutes of just actions sequences cut together and the action sequences were too long.
Special effects were well done though.

My recommendations: Avoid if you aren't totally into RE and if you are totally into RE; rent the DVD when it is released.

 

[zed]

Watched The Signal (2007) on the weekend. Highly enjoyable "zombie" movie (more your 28 days rage induced zombie than classic) with 3 different points of view of the story. Not really knowing what to expect (I prefer keeping myself in the dark about movies, other than reading brief synopsis on imdb and going over a couple of spoiler-less reviews), I found it well paced with excellent script. Was actually a really good laugh during the 2nd story. The ending was a bit poor though, a bit derived.

you may also like the similar pontypool http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226681/ (both 7/10)

 

[Malo]

you may also like the similar pontypool http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226681/ (both 7/10)

Looks intriguing, thanks.

btw I checked out Visitor Q, definitely one of the more twisted movies from him lol. Still it was actually very well done and not completely over the top just for the sake of it.

Also I am absorbing Tetsuo in parts for the first time. Incredible imagery and audio, very strange but riveting. Love the cinematographic style. The music is an excellent choice to go along with the ride.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Just saw Dredd, and like it. Very bloody, lots of action, like the slow-mo effects. It is missing that element of humour from the comics, so they played it very dark, also the

Spoiler

hit squad of corrupt Judges

seemed a bit harsh in the first movie given what we know about Judges. All in all, a pretty faithful reproduction of the spirit (if not all the details) of Dredd. Karl Urban is spot on, and really looks the part too. Don't see this film if you object to a lot of graphic violence.

It was actually the first time I've seen a movie in 3D, and I didn't like it much. I didn't like the way it pulled your focus around and made things a darker. It kind of distracted from what what going on. There's also some little bits of blurring and prismatics going on even on the designated focal plane where the two images aren't quite coming in right because of your viewing angle. Wearing dark glasses in the dark tends to be the thing that my eyes don't like, so this didn't help. I also find that movie theatres tend to have a softer, more washed out image than a good TV, and cutting down the light through the glasses didn't help that any.

Although it's done very well and there are some great 3D moments, I just don't like the way the tech works and the effect it has on image quality. It's like you've traded off IQ for 3D gimmickry.

My wife also enjoyed the film, and she wears glasses to watch movies, but she hated the 3D stuff even more. She said she couldn't focus fast enough on the moving things in the image, and sitting anything other than straight ahead made it even worse. We actually only went 3D as there were no 2D showings this afternoon, so no more 3D movies for us I think.

 

[Davros]

Its a trend a higher percentage of people are now prefering to see a movie in 2d now the novelty has worn off.

 

[Arwin]

Sounds like your cinema didn't have too great 3D available. Do you happen to remember what tech they had? If you can give a link to the website of your cinema, I can probably find it there as well.

My TV basically produces an image in 3D mode that is too bright for normal use, and has compensated colors to adjust for the polarised glasses. It's quite surprisingly good (especially for a 270 euro TV), and no-one who's tried it here so far has failed to be impressed.

So far I've had great experiences with 3D in the Cinema too though, but maybe just luck, and/or being wise enough to select Pixar movies mostly (which tend to have great 3D). In fact, probably the only non-Pixar movie I've seen in the cinema in 3D is Pixar.

I think there's been a lot of crap movies in 3D especially in the cinema when it was all the hype, lots of movies even shot in 2D and then upscaled, that hasn't helped.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Sounds like your cinema didn't have too great 3D available. Do you happen to remember what tech they had? If you can give a link to the website of your cinema, I can probably find it there as well.

The cinema is a chain, (Odeon) so their website may not say in particular. They were Real3D marked glasses. They also have different screens such as digital ILP and IMAX too. If you can't just go to a 3D cinema and have a good experience, then there's a problem that you can fall foul of crappy tech, especially when they are charging more for the 3D.

Personally, I just thought that the whole idea of polarised glasses showing a different image to each eye whilst cutting down the light is just not good enough tech for a cinema. It's fine for the gimmick of 3D, but it degrades the image quality and the viewing experience. I've seen 3D demo's in TV shops that I thought worked better. And I thought Dredd did it well, I can't image how badly those 3D retrofitted movies must be even worse.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Sounds like your cinema didn't have too great 3D available.

Has nothing to do with the cinema, all with 3d just not being all that great. I dont want to wear glasses, I don't like how half the image is blurry, my eyes and head start to hurt. It's just not relaxing to watch a movie in 3d.

 

[zed]

Also I am absorbing Tetsuo in parts for the first time. Incredible imagery and audio, very strange but riveting. Love the cinematographic style. The music is an excellent choice to go along with the ride.

tetsuo wont appeal to all, tetsuo 2 is nearly as good (I havent seen part 3) what makes tetsuo so brilliant is its made chiefly by one dude for ~$10,000 it just shows you what dedication can do, miike's DOA'3 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301167/
is similar somewhat (though thats the worse film from that trilogy)

if you want a film like the signal see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0643109/
carpenter's best work since 'the thing'

 

[Arwin]

Has nothing to do with the cinema, all with 3d just not being all that great. I dont want to wear glasses, I don't like how half the image is blurry, my eyes and head start to hurt. It's just not relaxing to watch a movie in 3d.

You're stating your opinion as fact, which would be fine if you weren't saying 3D in general. You may simply have a condition that doesn't allow you to enjoy it, where on the extreme other end there are people who's eyesight improves watching 3D (for instance people with a mild case of lazy eye, like me).

 

[zed]

don't like how half the image is blurry, my eyes and head start to hurt. It's just not relaxing to watch a movie in 3d.

non cheery picked images, show that even in non 3d films, half the image is blurry are as well, its how cameras work

the reason you get a headache is cause the 3d is working so well (unlike the normal 2d film) that its fooling your brain into thinking if I just focus on the blurry bit I can bring it into focus (which of course doesnt work, hence the eyestrain/headache) the best way to fix this problem (until they build something that sees where your eyes are looking at and focuses the picture on that, now that would be cool) is to actively say to your eyes/brain this is an illusion just go with the flow

 

[Pressure]

That's just Depth of Field ... which isn't user-selectable as it depends on the camera and lens used and is completely chosen by the Director of Photography (DoP) when filming.

Not sure I completely understand the love-fest for 3D, as it rarely adds to the story-telling but is easily shown off as a gimmick, with things sticking out of the screen in your face.

I suppose I just haven't had the pleasure of watching any good 3D movies. Any recommendations?

 

[suryad]

I bought How to train Your Dragon in 3d as well as Tintin in 3D and I must say while the 2d versions are excellent, there is another layer of immersion added because of 3D on my tv. Love my tv to death and love those 2 movies. Tintin in 3d bluray is especially staggering. Feels like I am looking out of a window!

 

[Arwin]

TinTin is definitely a good one to start with. Was the first 3D movie I saw on my 3D tv (rented). John Carter looks really great too, and because of its variations in settings, both realistic and unrealistic, is a pretty good showcase (which is why I bought it after having rented it). The Avengers was also really nice. I liked Shrek 4ever a lot too, had some smart evocative use of 3D for enhancing emotional interaction with the story, though Puss in Booths, being more recent, probably looks even better.

But TinTin definitely recommended as a test case. If that doesn't look great to you, eitheryour eyes or the display (tech) is broken

 

[Scott_Arm]

Saw Expendables 2. It was bad, but not really the good kind of bad. Van Damme was wasted. What camera time he had was pretty good, showing some real charisma as a ridiculous villain. Chuck Norris just plain sucks. I didn't think the action scenes were very good, and the whole movie had an incredibly cheap quality to it. I would have thought they'd do it up a little more since the first one made so much money. This really was a straight-to-video type movie thrown up on the big screen. It had a few moments that were kind of cool, but overall not as good as the first one in the "so bad it's good" kind of way.

 

[KimB]

the reason you get a headache is cause the 3d is working so well (unlike the normal 2d film) that its fooling your brain into thinking if I just focus on the blurry bit I can bring it into focus (which of course doesnt work, hence the eyestrain/headache) the best way to fix this problem (until they build something that sees where your eyes are looking at and focuses the picture on that, now that would be cool) is to actively say to your eyes/brain this is an illusion just go with the flow

Perhaps even more than that, we actually use the information of the focus from the lenses in our eyes to tell depth. One of the ways that this was made blatantly obvious to me was in a physics lab where the students were studying optics, and we had them look through a lens with one eye to see a virtual image. It turned out to be pretty easy to detect the distance to the virtual image with just one eye. And it was also quite clear that apparent size had nothing to do with it, as the size of the virtual image gets larger as it gets further away.

What all this means is that when you have a 3D effect that conflicts with the focus of the lenses in your eyes, you're going to end up with eyestrain after a while. Even if the camera's depth of field is set so that every piece of the image is clear.

Edit:
Oh, and for those singing the praises of 3D TV, bear in mind that the depth range for a TV is generally going to be much smaller than for a much larger movie screen, so it makes perfect sense that it would produce less eyestrain.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm pretty sure that the US market for Dredd comics is miniscule compared to the UK market, but perhaps some UK resident has better info.

Correct. What I like about the look of this one is that it looks like the audience they aimed for was the UK fans, rather than the absolute horrid piece of shit that was the Stallone movie, that just tried to turn the character into a general-audiences type of popcorn-movie action hero for the USA. This Dredd looks ruthless and brutal. I can't wait to see it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The Girl Who Played With Fire ... Wow, what a piece of crap. I'm not sure why they bothered starting making a hollywood version of this series. The hollywood one was actually better, I thought, but the second story is just awful. Without changing it entirely, I have no idea how they intend to continue the series.