Movie Reviews 2.0

I'll be watching the Raid 2 tomorrow night (the wife, who doesn't like violent/scary movies is out for a meal with her colleagues) and I'm quite looking forward to it. The first one left me pleasantly surprised so the second should be good (and it was a good bit better than the Dredd film which it was filmed before, I understand). Just mildly concerned about the length as I need to make sure it has finished by the time she gets home!

 

Agreed, actually would love to see a proper Star Wars movie without any Jedi.

 

Movie is hella long indeed. 150 minutes I believe.

 

Well, I've watched The Raid 2 and was a little disappointed. Extremely high body count (to say the least!) as expected, but the storyline obviously couldn't match up to the simplicity of the first film and I thought it all did get a bit too convoluted though it was still predictable!

Tonight, I'm putting myself through the chore ot watching the most recent Transformers movie, God help me!

 

I have a slight problem that maybe someone can help me out with; Given the contents of this thread, I thought this might be the best place to ask without having to make a dedicated topic:

Has anyone purchased the Bluray disk of the movie "The Equalizer" (with Denzel Washington) and is running a home theatre and can watch the movie with DTS-HD? I have noticed some clipping from the rear speakers at precisely 0:31:36. At precisely this moment, (give or take a second) when the sound gets loud with some effects being played through the rear-speakers (I have a 5.1 set-up), there's some nasty clipping to be heard. Sounds a bit like an electrical interference, similar to when you connect or disconnect speakers while they are connected to the amp. This only happens using the DTS-HD track - if I disable HD sound so that only the DTS-Core track is played, I don't have any distortion/clipping. I have tried a few things to make sure the clipping is within the encoding of the movie and not related to any interference caused by my set-up.

I have experienced this also with the movie Edge of Tomorrow (EU edition), but only with the German DTS-HD track (happens in about 3 to 5 scenes throughout the movie, always rear-speakers). The english DTS-HD track was okay (same scenes). Apart from these two movies, haven't noticed this in any movies so far (and I have many DTS-HD encoded movies).

For the record, my set-up is a Rotel surround processor (RSP-1570) and a Rotel class-D amplifier (RMB-1575). Anyone who can confirm this or similar experiences?

 

I saw the last Hobbit couple days ago. It was ok, but yesterday I watched Guardians of the Galaxy and it was very good Funny stuff.

 

I have Equalizer waiting to watch so I'll check it on my system. I have a 7.1 though so not sure if that will make a difference to the test since it does have a full 7.1 audio track.

 

Took my son to see the Battle of Five Armies today. He enjoyed it, naturally, he's only 7. I still think Jackson is a talentless hack given a large budget who's managed to take everything out of the books that makes them transcend generations of readers and distilled them down to mindless action set pieces designed to entertain 14-25yo movie goers. And this one is probably the worst of the six films.

 

Last really decent movie I enjoyed from Jackson was Brain Dead. I didn't mind the first 3 movies too badly, probably due to the hype of the time. The Hobbit movies so far though have been atrocious. I do believe you're right though, it's about target audience.

 

I missed all the Hobbit films. Couldn't think of anything worse to do with my time. LOTR was enough and great at the time - but never watched again.

 

I liked them better (The Hobbit) than all the new Marvel movies to be honest. Especially grievous were The Winter Soldier.
Guardians of the Galaxy could have used a lot more time to flesh out the characters. I feel like it should have been two movies.

I can understand why The Hobbit is off-putting for some;

• Dwarfs throwing dishes in the intro, ugh.
• Everything Legolas (why couldn't he have taken the high road, as Viggo did and said "his character wasn't in the book, so why should he be in the movie"-stance?!).
• The river and barrels scene ... it was only there to add 3D effects to the movie.
• The scene with the trolls, what was wrong with the way it is described in the book?
• The anti-climatic death of the dragon ...

I am probably forgetting a bunch of scenes from the movies but overall, I was entertained. Definitely not his best movies and they felt like he was getting a bit tired of the Tolkien universe honestly.

 

Posts like this one remind me how utterly wrong subjective opinions often are. You just forfeited all rights to movie criticism for the rest of your natural life.

 

Banned from cinemas.

 

Have to agree with this. Although I liked the 3 Hobbit movies just fine, they were nowhere as good as this years Marvel movies, not by a long mile.. All IMHO of course

This years top 5 movies for me was:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America, The Winter Soldier
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. Edge of Tomorrow
5. Godzilla

 

I just wish Marvel and Sony will close the deal soon so Spidey can go back where he belongs and do Civil War with Capt. Gorgeous.

Come on Sony, let it gooooooo let it gooooooooo

 

Yeah, that would be great(to have SpiderMan in Civil War), but if they were to get back the rights for SpiderMan, I hope it won't interfere with there current plan for the MCU and with that I mean that they don't sacrifice any of the announced films to "shoehorne" a standalone Spidey film into Phase 3. Better to get a standalone (MCU)SpiderMan film after part 2 of Avengers: Infinty War

 

It's an valid opinion which you may disagree with and it is apparent you do. I don't have to throw a tantrum over differing opinions but I would rather aknowledge them and hope those with different views than me can at least respect that.

Or else we might as well let the conversation deteriorate down to the level where ignorance is just as good as knowledge.

I really liked 20,000 days on Earth with Nick Cave.

 

Many thanks Malo.
I have actually figured out so far that what I am experiencing might be down to a DTS decoder related bug called "DTS Bomb" or "Bitstream bomb", which was widely discussed on the avsforums a couple years back. It is only when watching DTS-HD MA content on affected DTS decoders. Seems my Rotel processor is one of them.

I must assume that most newer equipment are not affected by it anymore or have had a firmware fix. If you are interested to know what kind of artefacts this movie provokes, here are two soundfiles that I have recorded:

Example Edge of Tomorrow scene @ 00:34:32 - at 29 seconds
Example The Equalizer scene @ 00:31:37 - at 18 seconds

I certainly hope you or anyone else is not having these artefacts - which sound like popping / audible crackling - but if you do, be aware, as these are not the only movies to exhibit these artefacts that could potentially damage your speakers.

 

Hmmm. My AVR blew whilst I was watching Edge Of Tomorrow - right at the start where there's the deep bass and scratchy noise type soundtrack during the intro. Wonder if this was the cause?

 

A little family viewing this afternoon at my parents, What's in a name? - a french-belgian comedy / drama adapted from a stage play with the same actors. Five people get together for dinner who have been friends since childhood, and a joke on of them pulls gets out of control. I've forgotten how long it was since I've seen an 'intelligent' comedy, very funny and also quite touching at times. Even though it's not set at Christmas, it was still a great fit.