Movie Reviews 2.0

I didn't actually finish watching the movie so I don't dare click on your spoiler - even though I probably won't bother to finish it, ever.

Your loss because it is quite a fun film.

It just didn't feel like Dredd, him versus a gang of regular drug-dealing thugs? Realistically, how is that supposed to work anyway? I don't get it. Realistically (lol... talking about comic book characters in terms of realism. ;)), after Dredd shoots about 10 of them without effort, how likely are the rest to want to go up against him, I'm just asking. Yet they keep on coming.

That is explained in the film, people are scared of Dredd but they are more terrified of Ma-ma and what she will do. The initial setup of the movie was dropping two skinned bodies of people who were known to have crossed Ma-ma to make the point that she should be feared.

...And suppose they actually manage to off him. Heck, him and Anderson. That's two dead judges. Then what? They live happily ever after in infamy, ruling their little city-block kingdom forever? Hell no. Justice Dept - who of course know where Dredd went - is gonna march in with 50 judges, clean that pigsty right out. They're not very smart, those people.

Because you didn't watch the film all the way, you missed the bit where it is revealed that Ma-ma has pull within the Justice department quite heavily. She wants to make an example of Dredd and Anderson precisely because it does send the message that she has nothing to fear from the Justice Department. It also explicitly tells you in the film she is making a play for control of the entire city and is close to pulling it off.

*sigh* Movie script writers. Kill 'em all, I say. :p

Before you begin yer campaign it might be worth actually watching the films properly. Just sayin. :)
 
Well I am glad I am not the only one... so what was with the rotten tomato score then? I really don't get it. I was watching it and thinking that the
plot where you are stuck in a tower and have to kill everyone
wasn't new or exciting either. I just did not get why it rated as high as it did.

Because it got the tone and atmosphere right. Dredd, the film, explores the moral ambiguity of someone being judge, jury and executioner quite well with Anderson clearly having quite a few qualms about it. It also doesn't succumb to Hollywood foibles like taking Dredd's helmet off. (Which the earlier Judge Dredd movie did much to its discredit.)

The new film isn't anything radicly new in terms of plot. It simply executes well and despite the visual changes in the look of Mega City One stays very true to the intent of the comics.
 
Ok I just saw looper. It was fun, but there were mistakes. Definitely worth watching, but maybe like a 7/10.
Basically they just seem weird how they deal with time travel. The characters are stupid in general. Like after the killing rampage why in the hell would Bruce take a skimpy revolver only to hunt down the great evil kid? Why did he kill himself at the end when he could have done lots of other things?

Time travel movies are always a mess though.

Because he didn't know how powerful the kid was at that point - all his memory would tell him is that he can destroy a room given a bit of time. A pistol has plenty of standoff distance to keep him safe and he was half a field away at the time. Remember Kid Blues' whole discussion about gatts and blunderbusses?

Why does he kill himself? Because the whole thrust of the film is the utterly selfish character who literally has had the blood of his friend on his hands thanks to being entirely self-serving becoming someone who is capable of sacrifice for someone else. It is the move from selfish to completely selfless. The time travel aspect is just a convenient way to tell this in an entertaining fashion.

Looper isn't really about time travel though. Personally I'd love to see more films like this out there - it was clever, inventive and fun to watch. Yes you can nitpick the timetravel, and I understand the director/writer of 'Primer' has done precisely that with Rian Johnson, but it is a pretty solid film overall.
 
Because it got the tone and atmosphere right. Dredd, the film, explores the moral ambiguity of someone being judge, jury and executioner quite well with Anderson clearly having quite a few qualms about it. It also doesn't succumb to Hollywood foibles like taking Dredd's helmet off. (Which the earlier Judge Dredd movie did much to its discredit.)

The new film isn't anything radicly new in terms of plot. It simply executes well and despite the visual changes in the look of Mega City One stays very true to the intent of the comics.

Dredd is a great movie. I thought they did just about as good a job of the character as anyone could have done, and the inclusion of Anderson and her moral qualms was a very smart move.
 
Because he didn't know how powerful the kid was at that point - all his memory would tell him is that he can destroy a room given a bit of time. A pistol has plenty of standoff distance to keep him safe and he was half a field away at the time. Remember Kid Blues' whole discussion about gatts and blunderbusses?

Why does he kill himself? Because the whole thrust of the film is the utterly selfish character who literally has had the blood of his friend on his hands thanks to being entirely self-serving becoming someone who is capable of sacrifice for someone else. It is the move from selfish to completely selfless. The time travel aspect is just a convenient way to tell this in an entertaining fashion.

He broke into the armory. He had access to many better weapons. If you want to kill someone you would use a rifle, neither a gatt nor a blunderbuss. It was just silly. It was lazy writing. I understand it would have ruined their idea if he just pulled out one of the other weapons and shot the kid, but you could still have the same sort of thing happen with his younger version shooting himself, or jumping in front of the bullet (hah there is the time conundrum). He could have shot his own hand/fingers off as well to make his future self drop the weapon. There are just many many options.

Anyway like I said it was fun, but not the best ever.
 
Has anyone bought The Hobbit on blu-ray yet? I'm curious wether the movie in disc format will exhibit the same odd, annoying strobing that was visible in rapid action scenes as the movie in cinemas did... That would be a dealbreaker for me I think. It looked bad enough at 48fps, I can't imagine being able to deal with it at a mere 24.
 
Has anyone bought The Hobbit on blu-ray yet? I'm curious wether the movie in disc format will exhibit the same odd, annoying strobing that was visible in rapid action scenes as the movie in cinemas did... That would be a dealbreaker for me I think. It looked bad enough at 48fps, I can't imagine being able to deal with it at a mere 24.

You saw strobbing with 48fps projection ? I regularly see strobbing with 24fps, but was really pleasantly surprised with the smooth frame rate of the hobbit. Is it possible for a theater to have an unsynchronized output ? Something like vsync/no vsync (I sure hope not :D)

It would be easy to check again, but it seems HFR trailers are not on internet yet. There is a trailer of the hobbit on youtube at 48fps, but it's interpolated frames and quality is crap.
 
You saw strobbing with 48fps projection ?
Oh yeah. It was all over the movie, special effects (IE, computer graphics) in particular seemed to suffer from it. There was far too little, possibly no motion blur at all on moving objects and people, the end result being the same sort of motion images you see in many TV sportscasts where they shoot video with fast shutter speeds to produce sharp images.

It looked really, really bad. Movies need motion blur to look smooth, or far faster framerates than mere 48fps.
 
Well, District 9 was very good so hopefully Blomkamp hasn't followed it up with a turkey.

Looks very pretty but I'm a bit leary of that storyline. Fingers-crossed it ain't too bad!

Slightly Ringworld-esque design, obviously.
 
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So I've seen Oblivion today...

Let's get the bad stuff out first: story wise it's basically a mix of three other movies:
Moon, The Matrix, Independence Day
and the script somehow manages to make it sure that you can predict most of the plot twists and such.
It's also a bit theatrical, and some of the lines are maybe a bit corny.

Now for the good stuff...

It looks incredibly good. And it's not just the production design, or the CG, or all the stuff they've built. Much of the outdoor stuff is shot in Iceland, so there are some gorgeous vistas and such. And it's been using the newest generation of digital cameras, so the picture quality is also insane. There are some super close ups of the lead actors' faces with super shallow depth of field and there's no noise or loss of detail at all. I think it has some 8K sensors or so and the resulting material is 4K, processed down to 2K for the CGI and the final edit. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

Music is amazing too, and the sound design, and the action coreography. And all the dramatic stuff more or less works well enough in the end, too.

So it's worth the price IMHO, despite all its faults.
Let's all hope we'll get a fully satisfying SF movie in the near dozen releases this year, though :)
 
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