Movie Reviews 2.0

[Sigfried1977]

Boy, it really sucks to be you man. No offense, but I don't find half those movies bad. Not absolutely stunning, or great, but overall just solid quality entertainment. The type of movie I can watch a second time too without getting bored. Fair play, I haven't watched the latest Captain America flick (I jumped past most posts on this for spoiler reasons), but GotG was cool (I had zero expectations of it, but genuinely thought it was very funny most of the time), I like the new Spiderman remakes (despite being very critical towards the whole remake thing with new actors and so on), Ant-Man was yet another one that was okay and quite funny. The new X-Men movies, well... rather good too. They've all been rather similar from a quality point of view (having just watched the original 3 movies).

Sure, there are not any of Nolan's Batman caliber that is IMO more a drama-thriller than outright superhero action, but I thoroughly enjoyed them for what they are. Wasn't entirely sold on Age of Ultron (especially how the plot unfolded and towards the end), but then again, I wasn't amazed by the first Avengers movie either. I think I prefer the "one superhero solo flick" to the "hey lets put them all in one movie" kind of guy.

Where did I say all of them were bad? The only legitimately terrible ones were The Amazing Spider-man 2 and Batman V Superman. Days of Future Past was so-so like all the other X-Men movies by Bryan Singer. First Class was the only really awesome one of the bunch because he wasn't involved. I'm rather indifferent to the Thor films, but I liked or even loved just about all the others. All I'm saying is that I'm just not that excited about them anymore because there's so bloody many of them every year.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I thought Days of Future Past was waaay better than First Class. It was Avengers level for me. Then again I also enjoyed Batman V Superman.

 

[London Geezer]

One thing I noticed a lot.

The action scenes on Civil War looked noticeably 'clearer' than most other movies I've seen. Less blurry, less messy. How did they get that look? It almost looked like some framerate trick, or very fast stop-motion? Don't really know how to describe it - it ran at 24p but during fast scenes (I first noticed it when Scarlett Johansson was jumping around in the beginning of the film) you could clearly see each frame clearly with little or no motion blur, which would usually be the case.

It made the action a lot more pleasant and less confusing to watch.

 

[Grall]

They shot the action scenes with high-speed camera shutter. Makes the fights look like a fucking TV sports event. I disliked the effect enough to knock a whole point off my final score because of it.

 

[Sigfried1977]

The problem isn't that 24 frames aren't enough. The problem is that shooting compelling action scenes is hard, and apparently there's very few directors out there who can do it. Relying on rapid fire editing and speed is a great way to hide that ineptitude.

 

[London Geezer]

They shot the action scenes with high-speed camera shutter. Makes the fights look like a fucking TV sports event. I disliked the effect enough to knock a whole point off my final score because of it.

But it didn't look like sports. It didn't run at a higher framerate so the final result was 'movie feel' but without 'movie blur'. I liked it.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I didn't even notice it. Although my wife funnily enough did say to me during the first action scene that something looked strange "like the camera couldn't keep up with the movement".

 

[Dave Baumann]

One thing I noticed a lot.

The action scenes on Civil War looked noticeably 'clearer' than most other movies I've seen. Less blurry, less messy. How did they get that look? It almost looked like some framerate trick, or very fast stop-motion? Don't really know how to describe it - it ran at 24p but during fast scenes (I first noticed it when Scarlett Johansson was jumping around in the beginning of the film) you could clearly see each frame clearly with little or no motion blur, which would usually be the case.

It made the action a lot more pleasant and less confusing to watch.

Well, there this:

http://www.imax.com/news/captain-america-civil-war-first-use-new-imaxarri-2d-camera-exclusive

I assume the sequence they are talking about would be the Airport sequence (not seen the film yet), though they may have taken to using the solution throughout more of the filming process since this was announced.

 

[London Geezer]

I don't think that was related to what I'm saying...

 

[Grall]

Well, there this:

Ugh, I tried to read that press release, but the typeface they used hurt my eyes too much.

Looking forward to this movie releasing on disc in about 3-4 months though, regardless of the camera it was shot on. Gonna be an incredible movie year this year. So much stuff to buy!

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So I've seen CA3. I have to agree with a lot of the praise here, no point repeating it. However there are two things that I really don't like.

One might be intentional...

Spoiler

The villain of this movie is called Steve Rogers. The once likeable hero is now replaced with an arrogant, vain, violent and self-righteous bastard, who is willing to mow across anything and anyone, without even an ounce of doubt or conscience or regret. Fuck the world, he'll do whatever he wants and he's gonna save his old buddy just because. At the end when he throws down the shield and walks out in his imagined moral superiority, I really looked for the ceiling to collapse on him.

Okay, Bucky was a victim here, even when he murdered the Starks, and Tony still wanted to kill him, which is wrong. But Rogers isn't anything better, and his faults have actually lead to a lot of innocent people dying.

The only somewhat plausible explanation is that if his character was more human and actually conflicted, then it would have made him practically perfect, and the one person that did the right thing. But even if that's the case, the movie went too far.

Just as worse is the collateral damage, where all the guys on his team were talking down Stark in the prison scene from their imaginary moral high ground. The most painful casualty is Barton, who used to be the one character with his mind and heart both in the right place all the time. Looks like Sam Wilson might be this one from now on.

The other issue is undoubtedly a mess.

Spoiler

The movie is building up incredibly strongly to a fantastic finale - which is then left unfinished. It stops at the edge of the precipice and dances back, the conflict gets no resolution but instead it's left in the air and starts to dissipate. No catharsis, no sacrifices, no real damage; everyone just gets back to one corner of the ring and starts killing time until the inevitable make up coming in Infinity War. This compromise is unworthy of the outstanding movie before it. Such a shame.

Well, that's what I think about it now.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So I've seen CA3. I have to agree with a lot of the praise here, no point repeating it. However there are two things that I really don't like.

One might be intentional...

Spoiler

The villain of this movie is called Steve Rogers. The once likeable hero is now replaced with an arrogant, vain, violent and self-righteous bastard, who is willing to mow across anything and anyone, without even an ounce of doubt or conscience or regret. Fuck the world, he'll do whatever he wants and he's gonna save his old buddy just because. At the end when he throws down the shield and walks out in his imagined moral superiority, I really looked for the ceiling to collapse on him.

Okay, Bucky was a victim here, even when he murdered the Starks, and Tony still wanted to kill him, which is wrong. But Rogers isn't anything better, and his faults have actually lead to a lot of innocent people dying.

The only somewhat plausible explanation is that if his character was more human and actually conflicted, then it would have made him practically perfect, and the one person that did the right thing. But even if that's the case, the movie went too far.

Just as worse is the collateral damage, where all the guys on his team were talking down Stark in the prison scene from their imaginary moral high ground. The most painful casualty is Barton, who used to be the one character with his mind and heart both in the right place all the time. Looks like Sam Wilson might be this one from now on.

Team Stark then?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, can't really help it - I don't see how you could feel sympathy for the other guy in this movie.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

What I found the weirdest was the whole

Not being familiar with the comics, my impressions were that

Spoiler

it felt like a parent/child relationship, with the Vision feeling completely unprepared but well-meaning.

So not weird at all.

 

[London Geezer]

Not sure why but, as wrong as the whole premise was, I was kinda team Cap. Until Spider-Man showed up then I was just wherever he wanted to be.

 

[London Geezer]

Not being familiar with the comics, my impressions were that

Spoiler

it felt like a parent/child relationship, with the Vision feeling completely unprepared but well-meaning.

So not weird at all.

That's the thing. Maybe my head was prepared for something romantic, so when I saw them in the movie it just felt very odd!

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Sure, but you are obviously biased here and can't help it. Had it been like, teamBlackWidow or teamScarletWitch, a lot of us would be similarly confused

Edit: and then Aunt May

 

[WhiningKhan]

Aunt May. Now that is one complete makeover compared to her looks in earlier spidey movies.
You know you've reached old, mature age when it does not feel wrong to say Aunt May is hot.

 

[London Geezer]

Well you could also say, an actress has reached 'maturity' (ie old age) when she's cast as Aunt May in a Spiderman movie. Jokes aside, Marisa Tomei is a fantastic -and beautiful, I think - actress, and a very young Aunt May. Then again Tom Holland is also a very young Spiderman so that's ok.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

This also suggest that they might go for a different family dynamic. I'm not the greatest comic geek ever, but even I know that one of Peter's main struggles was to help out with the rent and all. This is something that would be completely alien to teenagers nowadays, so they're probably going to replace this with some other type of conflict.