Movie Reviews 2.0

The first Thor movie was at its best in the scenes that didn't take place on our Earth. So in the second one, it seems most of the story is set in Asgard and other alien worlds. I kinda like that ;) but it also places the movie in the fantasy side of things instead of SF.
 
Ender's Game was a good book but I'm not so sure how well it will translate to the screen. No doubt they will Hollywoodise it quite a bit which will undoubtedly make things worse.
Since Orson Scott Card has outed himself as a vile homophobic racist, I've lost all interest in anything he might get any royalties from.
 
Anyone described as 'devout mormon' is more synonymous to 'devout flaming idiot'. Same goes for 'devout scientologists' also by the way. I'm avoiding anything true blood-related due to the same thing. (Says the person who bought Scientology Poster Boy #1's latest on BR and watched it the other day........ HMM. Well, you win some, you lose some, I guess. Tom Cruise's harder to avoid than True Blood! :LOL:)

Also, anyone using his or her religion to bludgeon other people is a vile sack of shit. This goes for any/all creeds by the way, not just the two aforementioned. Anyway, I don't think Cruise has slagged off being gay in the media, I dunno. If nothing else, regarding whatever his feelings/opinions may be on the subject he strikes me as too PR-savvy to do something like that (unlike say, Mel Gibson for example, who has some awesome blunders of that kind under his belt, not to mention his antisemitic drunken rants etc.)
 
During my holiday I saw among others:

- Wrecking Ralph ... good stuff. Not brilliant, but close enough.
- Iron Man 3 ... pretty good, but too chaotic and over the top. They wanted to do too much in too little film, imho.
- Hansel & Gretchel: Witch Hunters ... surprisingly good (I had low expectations), stupid, and more obviously comic book than Iron Man. Good cast.
 
I kinda liked wreckin ralph, bits were good, and a lot of it felt too much like fanservice for middle-aged guys like myself who grew up with these (now) old arcade games in the 80s. Like almost all animated movies it was very formula.

Interesting badguy twist, tho, and some of the humor was good. On the whole, I didn't laugh that much, but there were some good moments. Sarah Silverman was good too, the voice she used for her character reminded me a lot of Kari the Babysitter from The Invincibles. Until the end credits I was convinced both characters shared the same voice, but I was wrong... :)
 
Oh and by the way:
Aliens can come to our planet and wreck our stuff (ID4, Aliens Vs. Cowboys, the Men in Blacks and so on), but somehow, despite interstellar travel ability and all that technology, they just can't seem able to beat apes wearing clothes...! How come, I wonder!
:LOL:

I agree in pretty much all "aliens invading earth but we win" movies, but
Cruise did shaft the alien pretty hard in the end. Definitely more plausible than Independence Day (Alien mothership forgot to use protection! :LOL:)
 
I kinda liked wreckin ralph, bits were good, and a lot of it felt too much like fanservice for middle-aged guys like myself who grew up with these (now) old arcade games in the 80s. Like almost all animated movies it was very formula.

Interesting badguy twist, tho, and some of the humor was good. On the whole, I didn't laugh that much, but there were some good moments. Sarah Silverman was good too, the voice she used for her character reminded me a lot of Kari the Babysitter from The Invincibles. Until the end credits I was convinced both characters shared the same voice, but I was wrong... :)

I loved Wreck-it Ralph. Nice to have a rather reliable alternative to quality animation in case Pixar under-delivers (which they've done year after year for a good long while now). I really enjoyed Tangled as well.
 
Tried to watch Gravity this past tuesday, but ended up walking out after about 50-55 minutes or so. I just couldn't accept the premise, and it was too many disasters stacked on top of other disasters. Disaster oversaturation and lack of base credibility, pretty much. Big, big disappointment, after all the hype.

Can't complain about the acting though, and it's not often we see female leads in action movies. Actually it's damn near unheard of, with a few well-known exceptions. Also, despite having a female lead, it still probably fails the Bechdel test...

No, this pill I just could not swallow. It was too ridiculous. 1/10
 
I thought it was the best movie I've seen in cinemas all year. Knocked Zero Dark Thirty from the top spot. It was also the first movie where I thought 3d wasn't just a pointless gimmick. Bummer there aren't any IMAX screens anywhere near where I live.
 
Gravity:
The entire foundation of the movie doesn't work. A "chain-reaction" of satellite collisions totally wipe out all orbital communications, plus the hubble space telescope, a shuttle, and the ISS. Wow. Except satellites in general fly thousands of km apart or more so how could they possibly all wreck each other, also, comms satellites sit in geostationary orbit something like 36 THOUSAND km above the surface of the earth, not the ~30km of LEO. And, there's also ground-based communication, we don't need satellites to talk to someone in space... And after shotgun blast debris has passed an entire lap around the planet earth (which is 40kkm circumference at GROUND LEVEL, which is quite a lot really), it wouldn't be a concentrated swarm of junk anymore, it would have spread out so much that nothing would have statistically come even close to hitting anything up there. This was just a stupid-ass dumbshit fucking atrocious excuse of a movie raping physics and science to give a pretense of credibility to what in reality is nothing but a sham.

I can swallow a lot of crap when it's just a movie which doesn't pretend to be anything but a movie. TIE fighters that quite literally scream through the vacuum of space and bank like airplanes. Red matter, unobtanium, people who can fly or walk through walls; things of that sort. This was different. This was a movie which pretended to be real when in reality everything about it was totally wrong on a basic level.
 
Actually, Kessler syndrome is a real thing that NASA has investigated.
There are quite a few things which are wrong in the movie, but the initial scenario is a real life possibility.

Also, it's not the debris that's moving so fast, but the astronauts. For example ISS orbit time is ~90 minues, it is moving FAST. But from their point of view it's the debris that's arriving periodically.
 
I got a new projector so had to watch a few action movies :)

Fast and the Furious 6.

This was quite bad imo. I actually thought that the fifth was pretty entertaining, but this just mostly sucked. Barely watchable.

Total Recall.

This one wasn't too bad imo for basically a no-brainer action movie. The Blu-ray release is also pretty excellent image quality wise.
 
Arnold version Total Recall?

I watched the original Terminator on blu-ray, and the transfer is really well done, either the negative was super well preserved or they did a good job restoring it, but the menus haven't had any money at all spent on them. :)

Movie stands up quite well for its age - it's well scripted and well cast, so it holds its own almost 30 friggin years later! Holy crab... It's been THAT long? Wow.
 
Arnold version Total Recall?

I watched the original Terminator on blu-ray, and the transfer is really well done, either the negative was super well preserved or they did a good job restoring it, but the menus haven't had any money at all spent on them. :)

Movie stands up quite well for its age - it's well scripted and well cast, so it holds its own almost 30 friggin years later! Holy crab... It's been THAT long? Wow.

The new Total Recall is nowhere near as cool of the first one, but the Bluray is a thing of beauty. It's not even the same story, just lots of references to the original in a completely different setting.

I saw Thor 2 and I loved it. I don't know how anyone can criticise a film in which Chris Hemsworth appears half naked. And even when fully clothed he's so yummy.
That aside, I found it very funny. Great action. Story, well it is like the 23rd film about the same bunch of people so what can you expect...
 
I watched the first 15 minutes of After Earth yesterday - bloody hell what a stinker. Maybe it gets better? I didn't feel like taking the risk.
 
Gravity:
Also, it's not the debris that's moving so fast, but the astronauts.
The debris has to move, or else it would fall out of orbit... ;) Besides, with no air resistance to speak of, anything in motion will just keep on going in whatever direction it was sent into, meaning a cloud of debris would extremely quickly stop being one.
 
I thought the new Total Recall was ok.

I'm liking the Netflix originals, House of Cards was really good, great acting. Orange is the new Black wasn't quite as good, but I still enjoyed it.
 
An "okay" remake of a movie that still kicks just as much ass as it did 25 years ago is still kinda pointless, though. Len Wiseman is no Paul Verhoeven.
They should be remaking movies that had potential but ended up sucking for whatever reason, but I guess that's not very marketable.
 
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