Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)

I just watched Insidious: The Last Key too. I thought it was pretty good. Better than the 3rd one at least. Without spoiling anything it looks like the next one will be more of Elise during the events of Insidious 2, which should be interesting. I'm also looking forward to The Nun spinoff from the Conjuring movies.

I don't actively hate The Last Key, I just don't think it does anything particularly well, either. Making Elise (and Specs and the other dude) the focus of the series should work, but the story just didn't feel fleshed out.

The Shape of Water - boring, cliche, and predictable. I generally like Del Toro's work but this is utter garbage.

Lastblade said:

The Shape of Water - boring, cliche, and predictable. I generally like Del Toro's work but this is utter garbage.

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pretty much what every one i know who watched it said. funny how it won all those awards.

Bogard said:

pretty much what every one i know who watched it said. funny how it won all those awards.

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Those award shows are so phony and push stupid agendas.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Probably not a movie for most of you. This is a Julian Schnabel movie and it’s in French. It’s about the former editor of Elle magazine who suffered locked-in syndrome. Paralyzed almost completely, he was able to learn how to communicate and wrote a book through a transcriber. It’s a beautiful and tragic story about wanting to live, when death is the easiest way forward.

Ready Player One - well, Spielberg is 71, past his prime. What a shame his last great film will be Minority Report.

Lastblade said:

The Shape of Water - boring, cliche, and predictable. I generally like Del Toro's work but this is utter garbage.

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Jan actually liked this movie... I thought it was typical Del Toro...

Stylized... very pretty to look at... but I have no real personal involvement in it...

xROTx

PS. I just Watched: The Maze Runner Death Cure... I feel it was a better trilogy than the Hunger Gay_mes... but all in all... I am tired with this YAD type shit...

Glad it's all over with....

WHAT I REALLY want to see next is the Final Part of Takeshi Kitano's OUTRAGE Trilogy:

Outrage Coda

BEAT TAKESHI ROXXORS! :butFUCKINhardASS!:

Raleigh just got an Alamo Drafthouse so my wife and I went to their soft open earlier this week and saw Ready Player One. Shit was embarrassing. I probably would've never seen it had this opportunity not come up as I never read the book and thought it looked stupid but the wife said it was way better than the book and still managed to be weapons-grade retarded. The part I don't get is that anyone old enough to remember all of the 80s references is going to be embarrassed by the YA-style dialogue and hamfisted storytelling but anyone in the YA demographic is going to stare blankly at all the references. It's like a movie made for no one. Unless there's a lot more 40-year-old manchildren out there than I thought.

Good news is the Alamo is fantastic. Look forward to seeing old and new movies there.

READY PLAYER ONE

RAMPAGE

I walked into both of these movies looking to escape the current cultural zeitgeist hot button issues.

I walked out of both movies feeling I'd accomplished my mission.

I think my desire to just escape into simple adventure stories is a sign that I'm feeling as old as I'm getting.

I've lived a lot of life in my day. Seen and experienced a lot of difficult shit.

I can't say I've made all the best choices or all the right choices.

But when it comes to my adventure films, I just want to root for heroes striving for simple, understandable universal goals.

Absent the postmodern lens, as it just makes everything too blurry for me to care.

I can still go see movies like Detroit, which I feel have some cultural and social relevance even though it takes place in the 60s.

But when there are monsters and robots and lasers, I just want action and fun.

Both of these movies delivered. Neither is perfect but the flaws are, in my opinion, forgivable.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the movie is trying to be ambitious and provocative on a narrative level, I will scrutinize it more intensely.

But when the movie has the RX-78-2 from Mobile Suit Gundam fighting Mechagodzilla or Dwayne Johnson shooting helicopter missiles at a giant mutated alligator, I'll just roll with it.

Star Trek TMP and Star Trek II
both of these were originally released in theaters as Dolby Stereo. Not Surround Stereo, not 4.1. And the DVD releases are "remastered" in Dolby 5.1, and it is yet another example of a bad mix. In both of these, the music drowns out the voices, and overall the voices are too low volume even compared to the other sounds. I expect all the DVDs of the original movies to be like this now. Watching it makes you want to turn up the sound to hear them speaking, but then the music is blaring. It is good music but still.

Braven - Jason Mamoa and Stephen Lang in kind of an old-fashioned (sort of) home invasion thriller. Lang was especially good in a role that wasn't like his usual older badass, and Mamoa was good. Knew exactly what it wanted to be as did that well.

I watched the first half of Heat (1995). The pop-culture compost of Ready Player One is distasteful. But the Saban Entertainment building in a background, the SEGA logo ad placement, and Akira appearance in Val Kilmer's kitchen are the height of subliminal fan service.

Rot said:

Jan actually liked this movie...

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lol.........

Veronica - pretty good possession-type horror movie. Pacing was kind of slow, but not bad. Some genuinely inventive scenes. And good child actors- all three of the young kids were surprisingly good, and managed to add a lot to the movie where they could have totally tanked it.

veronica was a bit disapointing when i saw it...

but these movies where a lot better than i expected
Den of Thieves -imho gerard butlers best movie since 300 - overall great story, great acting...
The Florida Project - beautiful. i fell in love with this movie. sam rockwell performed very good in three billboards outside ebbing, missouri (overall a "good" movie) but willem dafoe should have got the oscar for his perfomance in this movie. great story, great setting, great camera, great acting, great fucking everything. but its not for everyone, might be too boring or too thin for some ppl. but imho: one of the best movies 2017...

^ I saw a trailer for the Florida Project but I couldn't tell if it was actually good or was indie film masturbation. But I keep hearing it's amazing. I definitely want to check it out.

Ready Player One (2018) -- If you have kids still young enough to take them to the movies, a 2hrs+ Spielberg behemoth about something the guy probably never did experience comes in handy: you can comfortably catch up on some z's.

oliverclaude said:

Ready Player One (2018) -- If you have kids still young enough to take them to the movies, a 2hrs+ Spielberg behemoth about something the guy probably never did experience comes in handy: you can comfortably catch up on some z's.

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Have you read the book? You're the same age as I am I think so alot of the nostalgia ticks wouldn't be lost on you.

Kid Panda said:

Have you read the book? You're the same age as I am I think so alot of the nostalgia ticks wouldn't be lost on you.

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Thanks for the hint, I missed out on that.

Leatherface 2017.

Complete trash. Utterly inept script, characters you don't give a shit about, not drop of tension or atmosphere that the series is known for. Just shit, avoid. Glad I saw it so I can tell others not to bother.

Seriously, this isn't even a horror film - the should have given it an edgy name like Leatherface Origins with a Jason X type cover so you really know what you're walking into.

Ugh... so disappointed...

Here's a recap of what I've been watching for the last few months:

Black Panther: I'm not a big Marvel fan but really loved this. The fight scenes actually did very minimal cutting (unlike Civil War where it's cut, cut, cut, cut) and it's overall very enjoyable. Hype was real and I loved it.

Martial Club: Amazing Shaw Brothers movie with Lau Kar Leung once again at the helm. So good and it's glad to see an Northerner who isn't always the villain. Only complaint I have is that the ending is a bit abrupt. Highly recommended.

The Magic Blade: Another Shaw Brothers movie starring the incomparable Ti Lung. Great film with lots of eerie, creepy sets. Strider Hiryu's sword seems to be almost a rip off from Ti Lung's weapon. Lo Lieh from 5 Fingers of Death fame is also in this one.

Way of the Dragon: Got this recently on Blu Ray from Shout Factory and it is awesome. My favorite Bruce Lee movie. Love how much fury he displays and his bout versus Chuck Norris is still one of my favorite fights of all time.

Boyka - Undisputed: Good solid Scott Adkins action film with choreo from Tim Man. Very straightforward B-movie with good fights, though the last fight felt a bit of a letdown (slightly). I think it's still on Netflix if you're interested.

Ghostbusters 1 & 2: I loved the cartoon but to be honest, no so much of the first film. However, my wife was pushing me to give it a chance and man....I LOVE IT! It's so fun and GB2 is great as well....not sure why it gets so much hate but it's good stuff. Also, gotta love the New Jack Swing soundtrack to GB2.

Just saw Annihilation. I fairly enjoyed it all the way up until the end when it got all silent and went for "lets just have silence and then make it like ah ha! Shes an alien after all! Urrybody gon' die!" The idea behind the way the alien or whatever it was that was at the lighthouse worked/terraformed/etc reminded me quite a bit of the Descolada from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th books in the original Ender's Game quartet.

It was an OK movie. Ex Machina was probably better, but even that wasn't super-great.

HornheaDD said:

Just saw Annihilation. I fairly enjoyed it all the way up until the end when it got all silent and went for "lets just have silence and then make it like ah ha! Shes an alien after all! Urrybody gon' die!" The idea behind the way the alien or whatever it was that was at the lighthouse worked/terraformed/etc reminded me quite a bit of the Descolada from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th books in the original Ender's Game quartet.

It was an OK movie. Ex Machina was probably better, but even that wasn't super-great.

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Thank you for spoiling the movie for me.

The fuck, was going to watch it this Friday. Thanks asshole.