Movie Reviews 2.0

[Rurouni]

It might be not for you, but a lot of people like it. If only counting movies from Marvel Studios, It ranked 4th (top grossing) after the 2 Avengers and Iron Man 3. I personally like it at least more than Avengers 2 and Iron Man 3. I also have 0 knowledge of GotG.
Having said that, Transformer also grossed really high.
At least GotG got a high praise. I don't know how Transformer (especially the last one) with that very bad reviews still grossed more than 1 billion..... I did watch it in the theater, but I promise that this is the last time I watch the franchise in the theater, unless it got favorable review (favorable for Transformer standard at least 50% on Rottentomatoes).

 

[Dave Baumann]

GotG ins't necessarily a "comic book" movie either - take away knowledge of "Marvel" and this can just as easily be watched as any Sci-Fi / Space opera.

 

[tuna]

The Kree stuff and those connections actually ties in with Agents of Shield a bit.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Sure, people with knowledge will spot the links to the Marvel universe all over the place (infinity stones, Kree, The Collector, Thanos, Howard the freaking duck!!, etc.) but prior knowledge of any of that is not necessary to watch this as a stand-alone movie that doesn't feature "super heroes" but in fact a bunch of aliens and a human abductee.

 

[Malo]

Been keeping up with true detective season 2 and as mentioned it's living up to its name as it had really really big shoes to fill after what those 2 did with the first season. Stellar acting throughout and keeps you gripped.

Speaking of fantastic TV shows with great acting, I've been going through house of cards and just about finished season 2. Really enjoying kevin spacey and the storyline they've created.

 

[Davros]

We now have a tv shows thread....

 

[Rurouni]

TV Shows thread

 

[Sigfried1977]

I'm not surprised its flopping. Who cares about the Fantastic Four? They aren't that interesting. That is the big problem with all current comic based movies.

Everybody knows Batman, Spiderman and the Hulk. There is enough material to make a pretty decent movie based on those characters. Xmen and Ironman, before the movies, maybe not as well known but still more than enough material to make good movies. I liked all the Xmen movies.

But now Marvell and DC are now working on 3rd and 4th rate characters like Deadpool and Antman that nobody every heard of. I think people are getting tired of all these comic based movies, especially the ones with the characters that are unknown to most people.

Iron Man wasn't a big deal before the movies happened either. Didn't stop him form becoming Marvel's poster boy. I loved GotG personally.

FF is one of the oldest Marvel properties and certainly rather well known compared to the likes of GotG and Antman. I never heard of GotG or Antman before the movies were announced, but I certainly knew the FF. Heck, the FF are among the few Marvel properties with a villain character that is any good, yet the films continue to mess up Dr. Doom every single time.

The new FF probably wouldn't have flopped if the movie was any good. That the two other FF movies spent most of the audience's good will obviously didn't help either.

 

[Grall]

I fairly liked the original FF. I don't care that Doom wasn't a maniacal eastern european dictator or whatever; I don't follow Marvel comics slavishly. Ben Grimm in particular was cool, I thought, and the others in FF were pretty alright too. The movie was too short however to do justice to both an origin story for the good guys and the bad guy as well AND have a decent attempt at a conflict between the two. It needed to be longer. The original X-Men was just like that as well; good but too short, and would have improved quite a bit from being lengthened.

These days Marvel movies seem to be at least two hours though, so there's more time to tell the story properly. No idea how long this FF version is though.

 

[Phil]

I for one am extremely looking forward to Deathpool. Actually, first i've heard of him was when they brought out the game. The game itself (on the PS3) couldn't be worse (mechanic wise), but I don't care - the humor is just fricking awesome.

From what I've seen from the Fox teaser, Reynolds seems to have done quite well in matching up to what I'd expect of the movie and actual characterization.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm watching the new Fantastic 4 right now. Bit dry.

Ant Man was really good and especially funny.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Finally took the plunge and watched Cloud Atlas. I liked it quite a bit. Sure, you could boil down the whole experience to watching 3 confused hours of transcendentalism for dummies (I heard this aspect of the narrative was barely even touched upon in the novel), but the whole thing was still a bold and ambitious experiment in film making. Most importantly, I was never ever bored by it. The film's extensive makeup gimmick also made for a fun guess-who's-playing-who meta game, but I can understand why it would keep people at arm's length emotionally, or even take them out of the experience completely. Overall it was fun times with a film that wasn't quite as self-important as it probably thought it was.

 

[Phil]

Would you care to explain the movie or the point of it? I watched it about a year ago, and I don't think there was a single thing I 'got' - besides the obvious point that 4 actors played 4 different (somehow connected? maybe?) roles in 4 different times or something.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Here goes:

Spoiler

I actually don't think there's an awful lot to get here: The stories were all very losely connected, usually via certain things the characters left behind to read or observe by characters from later eras. For example, Halle Barry's 1968 self had the letters from the gay musician guy, whereas he was driven by the diary of the lawyer who got poisoned on his return trip from a slave trade in Afrika. Doona Bae's duplicant character got her inspiration from a film adaptation of the struggles of that old British guy who got comissioned by his own brother to the old folk's home. 200 years later she was worshipped as a goddess by the future civilisation. Hugo Weaving played various bad guy roles throughout all the eras. Basically all the stories dealth with people who mustered the courage to fight and overcome similar kinds of opressing forces. It was a story about the constant of morals during radically different times, and how we're all separated by time and space, yet still somehow intrinisically linked. Maybe there was more to it than that, but that's what I took away from it. Might be worth watching it again. The sheer density of the film makes it very hard to parse. I must say the rhyme or reason behind the why and how the actors were reused eluded me. Sure, Hugo Weaving was always the bad guy, and the Korean woman was also wife to the lawyer, and she joined him in his work work towards the abolition of slavery. Tom Hanks' characters on the other hand happily resided on both sides of the moral spectrum throughout the film, and so did the characters played by the old British man. Maybe there was a point to all of that as well, but I have no idea as to what that point might be.

 

[Itisme]

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) - 8/10
Really liked it. Funny movie, will be good if you want to spend good time with your friends and want to watch something entertaining.

 

[Phil]

Also saw Mad Max. I loved just about every minute of it. My only gripe was how marginalized the titular character was in his own damn movie.

I hate to quote you again Sigfried, but after just having watched MM last night, I went back a bit in this topic to see what others thought of it and your post just highlights exactly what I feel about it. It's been a looooong time since I've seen the original mad max movies and I'm a bit baffled by the decision of this new movie to marginalize the character to this extend. This wasn't what Max is about, much less Mad Max. Or have I missed out what the original movies were? They should have called it Furiosa or something. I can live with her part, but I think Max should have been way more than he did. What a pitty. It's a good flick, but I think I just expected more.

Superb cinematography/filming/stunts though. Loved the craziness of it all.

 

[Davros]

ridiculous plot

Spoiler

Lets go to a place where there is water and vegetation,
Oh bugger its dried up
Hey i know where there is water and vegetation
where
The place where we started from lets go back

 

[Bludd]

ridiculous plot

Spoiler

Lets go to a place where there is water and vegetation,
Oh bugger its dried up
Hey i know where there is water and vegetation
where
The place where we started from lets go back

except

Spoiler

the place we started from is full of insane people with a lot of weaponry, so let's lead them on a chase and try to whittle them down and maybe kill the head guy and stuff

also, many of the best stories end up back where it all started. lord of the rings is a good example of that

 

[zed]

Cloud Atlas: I watched it about a year ago, the thing is I read the book about 4 years ago and its one of those rare beasts where the film is actually better than the book, which was a bit of a mess and frankly not written that well at all, I don't know why some ppl raved about it.
IIRC in the book about halfway through you had a chapter ~50 pages long written in bad pidgin english, ok reading a page or two of this is OK though tiring, but a whole 50 pages, don't know what the writer was trying for Finnegans wake or someit

 

[function]

Oblivion (the Tom Cruise movie): looks great, interesting idea for story (if not exactly original), but characters can't quite carry the emotional side of the film and fail to properly support the already uninspired ending. 6/10.

Enders Game: surprisingly, a film with kids in that isn't shit. Interesting ideas, decent effects, unexpected but thoughtful ending. 7/10

The Raid: low budget but great action movie. Claustrophobic, visceral, satisfying punch-bang movie. 8/10

The Raid 2: 45 minutes of action worthy of the first film diluted by two hours of boring, low-rent gangster movie. 5/10