Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[Freyj]

Sure but then she decided to emulate her fathers career and only make bad movies after her first two

Spike Jonze got that early talent in the divorce.

[chronovore]

Civil War: All you jokers want to hate on something looks like a heap of fun, I'll have forgot about y'all when I'm cheering my brains out at the theater.

[Tasty]

RLM + my favorite working screenwritter

Great video that sums up a lot of what I've been reading/saying about Hollywood recently.

Hell, Max even uses Star Wars as an example like I did last December.

George Lucas was given $11 million in 1971 ($64 million today) to make Star Wars. It was his second film and he was 28.

Can you imagine such a situation taking place today? A studio giving $64 million to a virtual unknown for a completely new script? These days it would be unheard of. Yet it used to be fairly common in Hollywood.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

winter soldier had some obvious The Raid shout outs but this is pretty blatant.

yeah, I really liked how the action in Winter Soldier was mostly physical and was largely coherent.

Winter Soldier was waaaaaay (and remains) above the quality level of all the other Marvel produced films. Sure, I'll slap leather for something that doubles down on that. Probably won't be better then John Wick 2, but if Hollywood is gonna make nothing but comic book films they might as well make good ones.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Sure but then she decided to emulate her fathers career and only make bad movies after her first two

You did not just diss Apocalypse Now 

As for Civil War, I liked The Winter Soldier but that's mostly because of the great action scenes. The Civil War comic is absolute garbage so it'll be funny to see how it translates into movies. Will watch on torrents(although I didn't even do that with Age Of Ultron).

Whoops, slipped my mind. Maybe cuz I'm not keen on redux

[Phoenix Dark]

The Conversation was Copolla's first film after The Godfather. Godfather II was next. All three films are classic. Scust...

[VomKriege]

It's choreographed well and they have 7 months to improve the CG, chillax.

Execution is pretty slow. Not anything we haven't seen better in a 80-90 HK flick

[thisismyusername]

That's some bad cgi or green screen...ugh

So, typical Hollywood film since 2002 then?

@Max Landis video: Couldn't care about Max. But man, Jay is looking

[Madrun Badrun]

I really like how the black panther looks

https://i.imgur.com/vLW4BOX.jpg

[Tasty]

At the end of the day we can all agree that movie execs universally suck.

I mean, they're business people trying to protect million dollar investments, so I can't really blame them either. That's sort of what Max was saying, all the formulas for how things "worked" have been shown to be BS, and the execs are just acting on that knowledge. The only thing that has a high success rate is stuff based on IPs. The issue is with both supply and demand side, which makes it all the worse. Hollywood-wise, the situation is pretty hopeless.

Thankfully the indie market has been scaling their budgets up to somewhat replace the middle stuff Hollywood isn't making anymore, but at that point the question becomes: how do you get people to check it out? It becomes a distribution problem as Max said.

It's choreographed well and they have 7 months to improve the CG, chillax.

Execution is pretty slow. Not anything we haven't seen better in a 80-90 HK flick

Yeah, and I'm sure the dramatic moments won't be as intense as Shawshank Redemption, but the overall package is still impressive considering Hollywood/the MCU.

[Madrun Badrun]

This is going to be the 13th MCU movie - we all know basically what we are going to get at this point. And what we are going to get is good.  fuck the haters. 

[Tasty]

I know, and I'm not interested in discussing it further with you either. If you disagree with a guy whose job it is to sell scripts about what kind of scripts are getting bought, then I'm not sure what will convince you.

[Great Rumbler]

George Lucas was given $11 million in 1971 ($64 million today) to make Star Wars. It was his second film and he was 28.

Can you imagine such a situation taking place today? A studio giving $64 million to a virtual unknown for a completely new script? These days it would be unheard of. Yet it used to be fairly common in Hollywood.

That's not entirely true. People kind of tend to forget how much of a massive success American Graffiti was, it made a ton of money [for the time], got near-universal praise from critics, and collected about a dozen major award nominations. And it certainly didn't hurt Lucas' career that he was best friends with the guy who directed The Godfather and the guy who directed Jaws.

[Tasty]

George Lucas was given $11 million in 1971 ($64 million today) to make Star Wars. It was his second film and he was 28.

Can you imagine such a situation taking place today? A studio giving $64 million to a virtual unknown for a completely new script? These days it would be unheard of. Yet it used to be fairly common in Hollywood.

That's not entirely true. People kind of tend to forget how much of a massive success American Graffiti was, it made a ton of money [for the time], got near-universal praise from critics, and collected about a dozen major award nominations. And it certainly didn't hurt Lucas' career that he was best friends with the guy who directed The Godfather and the guy who directed Jaws.

OK. One of the other examples I used was the Wachowskis, who by all accounts were the definition of "outsiders." (They got their start in comics before selling the screenplay for Assassins to WB, a screenplay that they say was rewritten by Brian Helgeland beyond recognition.)

So I'll use a different example.

The Wachowskis were given $60 million in 1998 ($86.7 million today) to make The Matrix. It was the Wachowski's second movie (I know I have it right this time) and they were 32 and 34.

I think by that point, it was already becoming somewhat rare, but now it just flat out doesn't happen at all. It's literally impossible for a director who's only done one or two movies to get more than $10 million from a studio to work on an original script. Absolutely impossible.

And that makes me sad.

They only got The Matrix produced because WB locked them into a three-picture deal with Assassins' script, and they only got to direct The Matrix because of the reception to Bound. All three of these were non-IP projects. Such a progression would be impossible in Hollywood today.

[Freyj]

This is going to be the 13th MCU movie - we all know basically what we are going to get at this point. And what we are going to get is good.  fuck the haters.

I don't understand where Stark's motivations in this are coming from at all, but his motivations in the comic were pretty thin / shitty too, so whatever.

[Madrun Badrun]

Ya if only the trailer was 20 mins so we could find out the motivation. 

[Tasty]

[Tasty]

TBH, I'm a huge fan of digital filmmaking (Fincher movies look perfect to me) and I won't mourn the death of film too much, but everything I've seen about Hateful Eight's 70mm format has made my pants tight.

Some amusing quotes on this topic from current big directors:

FILM OR DIGITAL?

Christopher Nolan: Butter or margarine? It’s called filmmaking, after all.

Alexander Payne: Of course, I prefer to shoot film, but what truly matters is projection – film projection – and that battle is already lost.

Ang Lee: I like them both. They’re like bananas and oranges – I don’t know why some people try to imitate film with digital.

Joss Whedon: Digital. I’M SORRY ART WORLD!!! I like to keep things open, figure out some blocking and concepts on the day. And everything I’ve ever made has been under-rehearsed and under the gun. Digital’s more forgiving, and I don’t worry about wasting film. “It’s only ones and zeroes,” is something else I say a lot on set.

David Fincher: Digital – what is this film?

[Freyj]

Ya if only the trailer was 20 mins so we could find out the motivation.

Fascist comic Stark is reaaallly bad so 

Back to your regularly scheduled not critiquing the saturday morning superhero movies.

[chronovore]

This is going to be the 13th MCU movie - we all know basically what we are going to get at this point. And what we are going to get is good.  fuck the haters.

I don't understand where Stark's motivations in this are coming from at all, but his motivations in the comic were pretty thin / shitty too, so whatever.

Tony is absolutely a product of his own rich white dude entitlement, and generally has little-to-no sympathy for people who don't share his advantages or intellect. It could just as easily get down to "Hey, I came right out and said 'I am Iron Man,' I don't understand why it should be hard for anyone else to register and submit to these simple 'guidelines' for hero behavior. I think they're OK, and you should too."

[Madrun Badrun]

Its going to be guilt over Ultron.   

[chronovore]

Its going to be guilt over Ultron.   

I don't see it. His mistakes with Ultron were already overlooked as he tried to do THE SAME THING AGAIN, and happened to create Vision. He has already moved past his own culpability in creating Ultron.

[Tasty]

Ridley Scott: 'Alien: Covenant' Is First of 3 Films Before Linking Up With Original 'Alien'

Scott’s aversion to sequels is clearly fading – and in part inspired by the new Star Wars films.

“Star Wars will be a juggernaut. Why do you think I’m doing sequels,” he quipped.

Fucking Star Wars...

Shooting will be  a mix of location and studio shoots with location requiting “monumental forest and monumental rock and the rest will be in the studio with fairly formidable CGI. The Martian was made for the most part 94 pecent in a Budapest studio. With green screen I now can’t tell what was studio and what was shot in Wadi Rum,” Scott said.

Awesome, another prequel trilogy to a beloved trilogy that relies too much on green screen and CG! I figured we'd get a break after The Hobbit mess, but hey, gotta chase that dolla.

[brob]

there are more bad alien films than good ones  ridley scott hasn't directed a good film in almost ten years no need to start jelqing years before release

[thisismyusername]

This is going to be the 13th MCU movie - we all know basically what we are going to get at this point. And what we are going to get is good.  fuck the haters.

I don't understand where Stark's motivations in this are coming from at all, but his motivations in the comic were pretty thin / shitty too, so whatever.

Tony is absolutely a product of his own rich white dude entitlement, and generally has little-to-no sympathy for people who don't share his advantages or intellect. It could just as easily get down to "Hey, I came right out and said 'I am Iron Man,' I don't understand why it should be hard for anyone else to register and submit to these simple 'guidelines' for hero behavior. I think they're OK, and you should too."

Wasn't that pretty much the motivation for the comic?  I'm expecting a shitty story here because the comic variant wasn't good. I haven't read Age of Ultron (or Rage of Ultron, really) but the movie itself wasn't bad. Just that Ultron's motivation for exterminating the human race was just "oh Stark's AI/Jarvis' split just went homicidal and wants to kill all humans, bb." I do think it's a bit weaker than the first Avengers which I felt encapsulated the "Phase 1" MCU movies target/goals of Marvel films pretty perfectly: Teamwork on screen with pop-corn action/scripts that are entertaining and don't need to be thought provoking. AoU/Avengers 2 meanwhile felt like Joss wanted to do similar with Ultron being the big-bad and them having a Battle of New York long-cut (maybe?) like the final scenes, but he had to throw the HAIL HYDRA base in due to Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D./Marvel committee.

[toku]

The problem with AoU isn't really Ultron. In fact he's the best part of the film or at least Spader's performance. It's literally everything else. The half baked quicksilver, its the hawkeye is now super important and the most human member of the team because, it's the forced love subplot between widow and banner that goes nowhere intresting, its them not even actually defeating the main villain, it's tony stark fucking up then decided you know what im gonna make that exact same mistake again but this time I'll get it right and actually being right,  it's them undercooking and overstuffing a movie that just didn't need it when they had like 2-3 more movies to push civil war shit.

[VomKriege]

Marvel hard at work shitting cinema like they did comics with that continuity cancer 

[Madrun Badrun]

both of you

[benjipwns]

The same writers/directors combo for Winter Soldier and Civil War are doing the Avengers: Infinity War movies. Those are supposed to start filming in the second half of 2016. Marvel got themselves into a bit of a time crunch by giving dates to everything so early. And then trying to fit a Spider-Man and second Ant-Man movie into things.

And they seem to like that early May slot enough that I imagine they aren't going to let Thor or Black Panther or somebody have one of those May slots to move Avengers back, especially after they made BvS flee in terror:
Iron Man - May 2, 2008
Iron Man 2 - May 7, 2010
Thor - May 6, 2011
The Avengers - May 4, 2012
Iron Man 3 - May 3, 2013
Avengers: Age of Ultron - May 1, 2015

Captain America: Civil War - May 6, 2016
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - May 5, 2017
Avengers: Infinity War - Part I - May 4, 2018
Avengers: Infinity War - Part II - May 3, 2019

Warner's schedule is such a mess in comparison, Justice League Part One in November 2017 and Part Two in June 2019? And they want to fit another set of Batman and Superman films in there somewhere. Everybody's films are going to have to take place before or after Justice League, while coming out in the middle of it. Marvel at least cleared the board so none of their Avengers, Guardians, Spider-Man characters have films between the two parts. And I imagine only Snyder, Goyer and Terrio know what the Justice League plot even will be considering their secrecy crazy over BvS. And they're probably afraid once they start moving films it'll be seen as demoting Cyborg, Shazam, Cyborg, Aquaman, and Cyborg to second tier status.

[benjipwns]

It's also fun how Civil War and the case of Batman v Superman are going to be riding so many of the same themes, ideas, etc. And solve complex issues in traditional comic fashion, lots of punching.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

Ridley Scott: 'Alien: Covenant' Is First of 3 Films Before Linking Up With Original 'Alien'

Fucking Star Wars...

Awesome, another prequel trilogy to a beloved trilogy that relies too much on green screen and CG! I figured we'd get a break after The Hobbit mess, but hey, gotta chase that dolla.

My main complaint is that a 78 year old man just seemingly locked himself into a rather lengthy commitment.

yeah right, like they'll ever be another Scott sci-fi/horror whatsit after this (even if this gets made), the guy changes his mind more often then a love hotel does its sheets.

[Bebpo]

Watched Bone Tomahawk at a friend's recommendation since the only genre I like more than Horror is a good Western, so a Western x Horror mashup is right up my alley.  Good movie, some real nice camera pulled back group shot scenes and cinematography overall is real nice.  Has a good horror build up and also satisfies that western road trip feel.  My only complaint really is the gore is pretty up there.  I feel like I watch most of the good horror films each year, and the gore is either cartoony or tame (hence why stuff like Crimson Peak is whatever), but the violence straight from the opening scene of throat cutting is pretty in your face.  Makes it a little hard to recommend to anyone squeamish.  Otherwise very recommendable.

[Tasty]

Ant-Man

Saw this movie last night and it exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations greatly.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Falcon scene was ace. The cousin Luis stories were hilarious. The macro scenes were crazy good. And hell, never thought I'd see an ant as being "cute."

[close]

The only downside is I guessed the entire basic plot of the movie down to the story beats after the first two or three scenes.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Pym finds awesome science thing, but military wants to use it so he hides it.
- Scott needs legit work in order to get affection of little daughter.
- Pym uses Scott to try and get tech back from new military-friendly bad guy.
- Daughter will become convenient romantic interest for Scott.
- At least one training montage.

It was also painfully obvious in the first scene with Hope and Hank that he was keeping her out of the suit to protect her, and after the wife comment in the first scene I easily guessed she died using the suit. The Quantum-verse stuff was also super telegraphed and I knew it'd factor into the climax.

[close]

In spite of this, the movie still surprised me on a scene-to-scene basis with inventive uses of the suit and ant-communicator tech, and both the humor and drama were well-done. Neither was overbearing and they complimented each other quite well.

IMO, it' up there with the first Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy as far as the MCU goes IMO (both in terms of quality and tone.)

4 / 5

[Tasty]

Christian Bale is a drugged-out screenwriter in this Terrence Malick film. Looks like my kind of movie. (Still haven't seen Tree of Life but I'm not keen to.) Music sounded like Trent Reznor.

Apparently it debuted at some festival last February but won't be released wide until March. Fricking artsy movies.

[VomKriege]

Already released over here

[Enl]

Watched Bone Tomahawk at a friend's recommendation since the only genre I like more than Horror is a good Western, so a Western x Horror mashup is right up my alley.  Good movie, some real nice camera pulled back group shot scenes and cinematography overall is real nice.  Has a good horror build up and also satisfies that western road trip feel.  My only complaint really is the gore is pretty up there.  I feel like I watch most of the good horror films each year, and the gore is either cartoony or tame (hence why stuff like Crimson Peak is whatever), but the violence straight from the opening scene of throat cutting is pretty in your face.  Makes it a little hard to recommend to anyone squeamish.  Otherwise very recommendable.

I really dug Bone Tomahawk as well. It will probably be the film I would recommend people to watch that's closest to Cannibal Holocaust if they don't want animal mutilations and want to watch an actual good movie. I was really suprised at the level of detail and quirkiness to nearly all the characters, and really cared if and when someone kicks the bucket.  Almost reminded me of a Coen Brothers' movie in that aspect (also helps that there are several actors from the current season of Fargo in it). Richard Jenkins character was really fun, and almost didn't even recognize Lost's Matthew Fox in his role.  This is definitely going to be one of those few modern horror films that will eventually get a rewatch from me down the road.

[Bebpo]

Saw Victor Frankenstein because I was bored and a friend invited me to join them and honestly the trailer looked enjoyable.  Fuck Max Landis, kid can't write.  The script is such a huge mess and by halfway through it has no idea what it wants to be and there are major characters that are the most paper thin I've ever seen.  It feels like a Bayonetta plotline or something.  Really, really bad writing.

The saving grace is James Mcavoy's performance as the mad scientist victor frankenstein.  He's all over the place tonally (and I blame most of that on the script being all over the place tonally), but dude gives legit performance.  A few of the scenes of his ranting and raves are really stellar.  Radcliffe is a great actor but he's incredibly underused here and outside of the first 20 mins has nothing to work with besides looking worried for 90 mins.  Some other cameos like Charles Dance make you wonder why they bothered.  Pretty bad movie.  Josh Trank fucked up with F4, Max Landis fucked up here, Chronicle was a fluke I guess.

Watched Bone Tomahawk at a friend's recommendation since the only genre I like more than Horror is a good Western, so a Western x Horror mashup is right up my alley.  Good movie, some real nice camera pulled back group shot scenes and cinematography overall is real nice.  Has a good horror build up and also satisfies that western road trip feel.  My only complaint really is the gore is pretty up there.  I feel like I watch most of the good horror films each year, and the gore is either cartoony or tame (hence why stuff like Crimson Peak is whatever), but the violence straight from the opening scene of throat cutting is pretty in your face.  Makes it a little hard to recommend to anyone squeamish.  Otherwise very recommendable.

I really dug Bone Tomahawk as well. It will probably be the film I would recommend people to watch that's closest to Cannibal Holocaust if they don't want animal mutilations and want to watch an actual good movie. I was really suprised at the level of detail and quirkiness to nearly all the characters, and really cared if and when someone kicks the bucket.  Almost reminded me of a Coen Brothers' movie in that aspect (also helps that there are several actors from the current season of Fargo in it). Richard Jenkins character was really fun, and almost didn't even recognize Lost's Matthew Fox in his role.  This is definitely going to be one of those few modern horror films that will eventually get a rewatch from me down the road.

Yeah, the characters were really good although I thought the main guy (from Dollhouse) was a little out of league imo and watching him walk really, really slowly was a little bit grating.  But yeah, there isn't a ton of dialogue, but the little snippets "He just educated two Mexicans on the meaning of manifest destiny" were well written and between the script and the performances, all of the main crew held the film.  Really, if it wasn't for the hard, hard violence it'd be a movie I'd recommend to a lot of friends/family. 

The part

spoiler (click to show/hide)

where they do the upside down saw cutter execution without cutting away is so fucking disturbing, especially so because it's a real technique and that it actually happened and to real people throughout history is just incredibly sickening.  Then again, it's weird a bit in how the violence is so sickeningly realistic (like the poor job throat cutting), yet the evil Indian tribe has Star Wars/Predator sci-fi enhanced vocal cord powers which are super cartoony and unrealistic.  Does feel a little out of place, but I think my take on making it work was that it added a surrealistic aspect to the whole film, that it's a fantasy take on mythos during the frontier period.

[close]

[Tasty]

I dunno, the RLM guys read the script and found it more enjoyable than the finished film:



Dude can write. I mean, he's written like 70 screenplays so if there's one thing he can do...

Now, can he write well... I dunno. But dude has some cool ideas.

His internet videos are great at least.





Also, Superman: American Alien had a great first issue.

Edit- Also, a lot of F4 fucking up can be blamed on Fox. Trank isn't innocent but it's unfair to blame the finished product on him when Fox kicked him off 60-80% of the way through (considering the substantial reshoots.)

[Tasty]

[Raban]

Best thing about Wrestling isn't Wrestling is all the hot rule 63 going on. Girl Shawn Michaels

I'm sorry but just like irl Ric Flair is the cutest

[Tasty]

Ric Flair's my favorite too.

[Raban]

Beauty and the Beast

[benjipwns]

Trailer for the trailer coming on Wednesday:

[benjipwns]

TheSilverstang66 1 hour ago
 Imagine Batman doing the reverse and putting glasses on Clarks face and combing his hair the other way
 Reply  · 667

[Great Rumbler]

I really wanted to see Superman use his laser eyes to burn up the Batman mask ala this classic cover:

[benjipwns]

If Grant Morrison wrote and directed these films, there'd be a reference to that somewhere.

[Tasty]

If Grant Morrison wrote and directed these films, there'd be a reference to that somewhere.

Morrison

[ToxicAdam]

That teaser just seems like it's trying way too hard. Like a comedy trailer that puts three nutshots to let you know it's REALLY wacky.

Whatever man. People seem to be pumped up for it.

[brob]

can't superman see thru the batman mask? is it lead plated?

[Tasty]

can't superman see thru the batman mask? is it lead plated?

It's a dream sequence anyways.

[benjipwns]

can't superman see thru the batman mask? is it lead plated?

That's what he did in the comics a whole bunch of times, even when the mask was just fabric. 

[Madrun Badrun]

can't superman see thru the batman mask? is it lead plated?

It's a dream sequence anyways.

Batman is tots into BDSM. 

[Tasty]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/han-solo-star-wars-spinoff-844956

[Tasty]

[TakingBackSunday]

looks fucking awful

[Tasty]

I liked him, actually. And yeah, Batfleck looking great.

Cavill and Godot looked like fucking cardboard posters though.

[Tasty]

He was alright but he's pretty flat in the trailers so far.

One highlight of this trailer though was more Clark Kent. That stuff looks pretty good.

[benjipwns]

I think Batfleck has been the best parts of these trailers, seems like he's nailing the role. He wants to do it justice. And makes me actually look forward to his solo film.

Though I think he did well with Daredevil too, even if the movie wasn't great, seemed like he wanted to do that role justice too.

I think Luthor's role is right as the force that unifies the Trinity (unless he's instigating the Bat/Supes fights) but not this way though. The Bats/Supes fights (absent the Bat-Plane) look better than I can imagine the final battle will be like Zod with...

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Doomsday. I'm assuming.

[close]

I like how Diana has yet to say anything in any of the trailers. And was standing in front saving the day and then it cuts to Batman v Superman title.

And are they contractually bound to use that kind of "I thought she was with you" shtick?

At least we finally know what's slamming her against the wall in the last trailer. I liked that shot because she just shrugs it off.

I'd rate this below Civil War's trailer, but looks like it'll be entertaining, have some great parts, with some garbage and do a decent job like Man of Steel of bringing in the larger DC Universe and its ramifications.

[benjipwns]

He was alright but he's pretty flat in the trailers so far.

One highlight of this trailer though was more Clark Kent. That stuff looks pretty good.

I liked that, one of my favorite things about the Batman/Superman comic (pre-New 52) was the internal monologues about each others respectful, yet highly differing views on things. Bruce seeing Clark as naive and too reliant on his invincibility, Clark seeing Bruce as too cynical and paranoid about human nature, etc.

I think Bruce got the better of Clark though in that exchange.

[benjipwns]

Jason Wilson 15 minutes ago
 Jesse Eisenberg’s Joker isn't quite as good as Heath Ledgers but I'll give it a chance.