Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[Tasty]

Really hope the new F13 movie is good. Rumors are it's gonna be set in the 80's and during the winter (an idea I had two years ago ), so it sounds like it's on the right track at least.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Jason > Freddy

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Come at me h8ers

[close]

[close]

[VomKriege]

Honestly all those slasher icons from the 80's are long past their expiry date and have been superceded by other, new, more in tune with their time shitty horror franchises. They're only kept alive by business interests looking for a quick and cheap buck, or worse, by people trying to do "serious" movies out of them. New Nightmare, Jason goes to Hell + Jason X & H20 all pretty much acted as a conclusion or book end for their respective franchise. Texas Chainsaw Massacre was always kind of the odd one, but I would maybe argue that TCM2 was a preemptive destruction by Tobe Hopper of a the slasher turn the series would have taken.

[Tasty]

Ugh fuck Jason Goes to Hell. FUCK IT.

Freddy vs. Jason is the bookend to F13 (cause Jason won. )

Jason X was OK I guess.

[Phoenix Dark]

Biggest failing of the remake was all this focus on Freddy and his past instead of the kids. He was a murdering pedo y'all, we don't need to sympathize with him okay and making the fact that he did do awful shit into an awful twist was dumb.

Like hyper said all you need for a solid reboot/sequel is interesting visual gags/deaths and a bunch of horny teenagers or twenty somethings trying to stay awake for a long weekend.

Cast bunch of pretty people
Hire a director known for strong visuals

Profit

Basically that's the problem with all horror remakes of 80s flicks. This obsessive attempt to modernize slasher flicks by humanizing the monster. We don't need to fucking see Michael Myers get bullied and beaten. We don't need to see Freddy's past. Hell apparently we didn't need to see the fucking engineers who created the aliens cuz that shit was wack too.

A kid kills his sister with a kitchen knife. A pedophile gets killed by a mob. Aliens on an ancient ship. That's all I fucking need to know nicca.

[Tasty]

Honestly the F13 reboot wasn't too bad. Pretty standard stuff. Probably in the middle of my rankings for the series.

[fistfulofmetal]

I just watched Wet Hot American Summer for the first time.

now let me say something real quick. I knew nothing about this movie. Absolutely nothing. In fact I would say I knew the opposite of nothing. I always assumed this was another "young people growing up and going through stuff" kind of movies. And for that exact reason I purposefully avoided it because I hate those kind of movies.

So when I hear about the new show, I ignorantly assumed it was meant to be a meta-commentary about those kind of movies and specifically a commentary about that movie. I hear from basically every place I look that it's super funny. But I thought to myself, if I'm going to watch it I should probably know the source material.

I didn't know. Guys. I didn't know this was a movie made by Stella.

Imagine going into this movie assuming it was going to be somewhat straight forward and slowly seeing it reveal itself. When I see Michael Showalter... then Michael Ian Black... I'm at a loss.

I honestly don't know what to say. I've never been this utterly shocked by a film in years.

[fistfulofmetal]

i've been rocked to my core, brehs

[Samson Manhug]

I had never heard of it until some of the cast was promoting their new show on a podcast. I enjoyed  the movie but the show hasn't been that great. Kind of reminds me of the new Arrested Development in that the cast is amazing but the show just kind of drags.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

it came out around the same time as the sorta simpatico 'Psycho Beach Party' and for a solid decade I conflated them into the same film.

saw Mr. Holmes today. Its a perfectly respectable, middle-brow, Grandparent appropriate drama about a very aged and frail Sherlock Holmes who is wading through a fog of his declining faculties and the mysteries of how to personally relate to people. Its hugely fitting of the name of one of its production companies, Miramax, but don't hold that against it. Ian McKellen is great in it, but you probably figured that out already.

also, a new 4K restoration of The Third Man is winding its way through the arthouse circuit, do go see it should the opportunity become available. Its quite entertaining and looks bloody amazing.

[Tasty]

They tried some interesting stuff, like having Jason run and be more "feral" which worked in a way. Didn't enjoy the bayou setting much personally though.

[Tasty]

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Shaolin Martial Arts

Pretty good random kung fu pick on Netflix. Totally has to be the movie QT took a lot of the training stuff in Kill Bill Vol 2 from.

[chronovore]

The Imitation Game - It was great to see Bandersnatch Cummerbund doing something other than Sherlock or chewing scenery as Khan. He's very good in this; some subtle stuff, and he's impressively holding his own against Charles Dance and Mark Strong. This is an eminently serviceable movie, which says volumes when realizing it's about engineering and possibly autism, and has Keira Knightley in it. I very much enjoyed it, but won't ever need to re-watch it.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Alex Lawther, the kid who plays young Alan Turing, is amazing. Really great.

[chronovore]

I ain't gonna lie: this looks like rent was due for Michael Cain and some egregious CG monsters, but I am still way excited for this.

[Madrun Badrun]

Looks super generic but I'll watch anything with Vin in it.  Also Frodo is in it. 

[Great Rumbler]

Gotta be careful with movies like this; sometimes their decent as cheesy entertainment, sometimes they're just really bad.

[Joe Molotov]

Vin Diesel as Geralt of Rivia of the Clan MacLeod

[Madrun Badrun]

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=123753

Budget    $120 million



9% RT

[Dickie Dee]

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Fox-May-Have-Messed-With-Josh-Trank-Fantastic-Four-Much-More-Than-We-Thought-76027.html

who knows 

[Madrun Badrun]

In other news, ANTMAN is over $300 million now.

[Joe Molotov]

Venture Bros already did a better version of a dark Fantastic Four.

[Great Rumbler]

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/JoshWildingNewsAndReviews/news/?a=123753

Budget    $120 million



9% RT

This was supposed to be a quick and relatively cheap flick to keep the rights/build a lateral movement for the franchise. Holy crap did they shit the bed.

Who wants to guess that they'll just sell the rights back to Disney just like Lionsgate/Sony did with the Punisher/Ghost Rider now that they got a new lease on unprofitable characters and can keep toying with them for years with a promised for/never intended sequel to this shitpile.

[Tasty]

The reshoots couldn't have been cheap.

Fox should have just let Trank do his thing, and blamed it on him if it failed. As it is, now they both share it.

[nudemacusers]

eh I think trank's unfuckedwith version would have been fine. maybe not tops, but certainly not a 9% on rotton tomatoes.  it's pretty apparent based on reviews, reactions and rumors that fox heads got cold feet about it and ripped it out of his hands leaving this mangled mess to show. which makes me wonder why they cared, if the whole purpose of doing a ff4 movie every few years is solely to hold on the franchise.

[VomKriege]

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Fox-May-Have-Messed-With-Josh-Trank-Fantastic-Four-Much-More-Than-We-Thought-76027.html

who knows 

Meh. Majors loves their actions setpieces, it's generally what all those movies are made around and the bar is really not that high, it just really needs to go all boom, even if the scene is mangled as all hell. The producers cutting three of them out ? It's really extreme. I cannot say for sure, but it might just be they were really terrible even on paper. The rest is par for the course for Hollywood. Must be pretty shitty to be in Trank's shoes but heh what did he expect ? Hollywood is the most Faustian industry of them all.

[Samson Manhug]

Have RT ratings changed in the last 10 years? Have more reviewers affected the averages or something? It just seems that I used to be able to count on a movie with 90%+ to be impressive and that just isn't the case for me anymore.

[Phoenix Dark]

Have RT ratings changed in the last 10 years? Have more reviewers affected the averages or something? It just seems that I used to be able to count on a movie with 90%+ to be impressive and that just isn't the case for me anymore.

Well pre-internet film reviews were largely done by film critics, whereas now the aggregate of film reviews include websites (HuffPo for instance), nerd sites, etc. That makes it easier for animated and comic book films to get high reviews. Basically if something is a fun popcorn film it's going to get amazing scores, even if it's pretty average as a film.

[Joe Molotov]

F4 with the worst opening weekend ($26 Million) for a Marvel/DC property since Ghost Rider 2 ($22 Million).

[chronovore]

F4 with the worst opening weekend ($26 Million) for a Marvel/DC property since Ghost Rider 2 ($22 Million).

But GR2 was actually fun.

[Joe Molotov]

It did have Nic Cage peeing fire, but that was in the trailer.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

SCRAPING AT THE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOAHHHH

[toku]

Love GR2. Neveldine/Taylor are ahead of the game.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

It did have Nic Cage peeing fire, but that was in the trailer.

naw, that was seen in the film as well.

Yeah, I'm a GR2 booster as well. The first film is hugely shitty, but the vastly reduced budget of the sequel allowed for far more quirkiness, weird casting (Idris Elba and Chistophe Lambert as dudes with wierd accents), and some honest to goodness good stuntwork instead of CGI soup.

Early word on Man from U.N.C.L.C.E. seems to be positive, but I'll bet that bombs maybe even worse then F4.

[studyguy]

Fox seems adamant at keeping this corpse moving.
http://comicbook.com/2015/08/11/fox-reportedly-moving-forward-with-fantastic-four-2-despite-box-/

Just stay down son. You've done enough.
 

[VomKriege]

Fox seems adamant at keeping this corpse moving.
http://comicbook.com/2015/08/11/fox-reportedly-moving-forward-with-fantastic-four-2-despite-box-/

Just stay down son. You've done enough.
 

Well, I guess they expect either one of the movies to catch the wave or to make Marvel cough some serious money to give it back.

[studyguy]

Fox seems adamant at keeping this corpse moving.
http://comicbook.com/2015/08/11/fox-reportedly-moving-forward-with-fantastic-four-2-despite-box-/

Just stay down son. You've done enough.
 

Well, I guess they expect either one of the movies to catch the wave or to make Marvel cough some serious money to give it back.

Fox has been throwing shit at a wall for years w/ this franchise. Still betting something will stick after 4 failures seems like a longshot tbh.

[Tasty]

A theory I heard a few days ago is it's just a face and Fox is gonna use F4 to barter for an X-Men-based TV show (which they are currently in talks with Marvel about.)

[Joe Molotov]

A theory I heard a few days ago is it's just a face and Fox is gonna use F4 to barter for an X-Men-based TV show (which they are currently in talks with Marvel about.)

So Fox will threaten to make more F4 movies unless their demands are met? Monsters.

[Tasty]

A theory I heard a few days ago is it's just a face and Fox is gonna use F4 to barter for an X-Men-based TV show (which they are currently in talks with Marvel about.)

So Fox will threaten to make more F4 movies unless their demands are met? Monsters.

Pretty much lol

[studyguy]

I'd be okay with Fox producing trainwrecks on the small screen.
It's the fucking full on film production that gives everyone a bad look.

[Tasty]

Two days after my birthday brehs

Edit- New trailer:

[Tasty]

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

so The Gift is a domestic character drama masquerading as a thriller, and its a good one too. Jason Bateman is terrific in it, playing essentially the same sort of character that he does in comedies, just recontexualized as a petty tyrant. Refreshingly adult for a movie that's playing in multiplexes.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a efficient, proficient, perfectly disposable piece of popcorn entertainment. I'd say its the third best entry in the series but that's actually not a slam on it. I'd be really happy to see this kind of thing continue every few years as a parallel James Bond franchise, assuming that Tom Cruise actually is an immortal superhuman(see also Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation).

[ToxicAdam]

I watch everything that Jason Bateman is in. He's always good.

[Cerveza mas fina]

I watch everything that Jason Bateman is in. He's always good.

Rewatched Dodgeball (10/10) again and yep, there he was!

[Great Rumbler]

It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see how it works out for them.

[fistfulofmetal]

Intersteller

Ugh. This movie is super unfortunate.

The directing is fantastic.

But every time any character opens their face the most trite and clumsy dialogue just spills out. It's almost like the script writer was using ad-libs and simply inserted the relevant dramatic tension into the spaces.

[VomKriege]

I am Legend with the prince of Bel Air. The last 20 minutes are a total shit fest of a rewritten ending (it is pretty well documented and plain evidence considering what's still in the film) that totally betrays and inverts the meaning of the original story while injecting a really cringeworthy religious component to the matter (I generally don't mind, but it's just so bad and by the numbers...). Nonetheless, even if the film had its original, more faithful conclusion, it wouldn't have been anything else than a mediocre take on the story, dressed into the usual modern Hollywood bombast : The film has to open up with an action sequence full of already outdated CGIs (pretty jarring when you're 4 minutes in) and Neville can't just be the last man on earth or a military doctor, he has to be the uber-scientist man of the year with a state of the art lab in the basement. His family can't just be dead, it has to be all dramatic and shown on screen. I dunno, is that supposed to make the character more interesting for Will Smith "grand" (OK, but nothing special) performance ?

Also, have Emma Thompson just for the pre-credit bits ? Get out of here.

Weakest movie version by far (The Omega Man is pretty wack but the intro is good and Heston has phenomenal presence, as usual). Stick with the Vincent Price's Last Man of Earth. It was on archive.org back then since no one has the rights for that. Still pretty chilling.

[Great Rumbler]

With a better ending and traditional make-up monsters [instead of this horrible CG things], it would have been a pretty decent movie. But no, they had to go and screw it up, because that's what Hollywood does.

[Great Rumbler]

Now, this could just be targeted leaks designed to push the blame for Fantastic Four onto Trank, but inside sources are currently painting a pretty awful picture:

In Trank's case, multiple sources associated with the project say the director did not produce material that would have opened the way to a salvageable film. And by several accounts, he resisted help. "He holed up in a tent and cut himself off from everybody," says one high-level source. Literally, there was a tent on the Louisiana set. "He built a black tent around his monitor," says a crewmember. "He was extremely withdrawn." Between setups, this person adds, "he would go to his trailer and he wouldn't interact with anybody."

Sources say Fox believed in what one executive calls a "grounded, gritty version of Fantastic Four that was almost the opposite of previous versions" — and initially thought Trank could deliver that. Several sources say Fox stood by Trank as he pushed a gloomy tone on young stars Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. "During takes, he would be telling [castmembers] when to blink and when to breathe," one person says. "He kept pushing them to make the performance as flat as possible."

There were worrying personal issues as well. As THR reported in May, Trank and his dogs allegedly caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to a rented house in Baton Rouge that he and his wife occupied while the film was shooting there. Sources say now that after landlord Martin Padial moved to evict Trank, photographs of the landlord's family that were in the house were defaced. Padial made a complaint to the local sheriff's department and filed a civil suit in Louisiana that is sealed. Padial's attorney, Michael Bienvenu, declined to comment on the matter. The sheriff's department says the case was "closed as a civil matter between landlord and tenant."

[VomKriege]

I'm still very annoyed we never got a good and straight adaption of I Am Legend. It's one of my favorite horror stories, and it got turned into some dumb Will Smith movie.

I think the Vincent Price movie, to which Matheson helped even if he wasn't too pleased with the result, is a pretty straight adaptation of the spirit of the novel. Price is really not how I pictured Neville, but he really does a terrific job selling the loneliness and creeping madness the character goes through. I really like the ending as well, with not-Neville going to the bitter end under the jackboots of the non-human new order in tights.

The 2007 version is very weird. Beyond the alternate ending, there seems to be hints of a much buffier backstory for the virus involving Neville or that the woman character was a lot closer to what she was in the novel. All we get in the end is basically the Charlton Heston version mixed with a standard modern zombie or virus plot that can't seem to follow any real meaning or idea to the end.

The dog is great though.

[Samson Manhug]

It has nothing to do with Mathelson's book, but the first two acts of I Am Legend is one of the best movies about a man and his dog I've ever seen.

[ToxicAdam]

RE: FF4

The whole franchise seems unsalvageable at this point. It's a shame, because there are still some good stories to tell. Franklin Richards being the best example.

[Great Rumbler]

It has nothing to do with Mathelson's book, but the first two acts of I Am Legend is one of the best movies about a man and his dog I've ever seen.

[VomKriege]

Fast forwarded through 2012, and it was every bit as disgusting as I expected. There's just something horribly off about how Emmerich does stuff and the way he turns a genocide in the billions into some sort  of rollercoster is really nauseating. I'm not sure, but the (outdated...) CGI and shitty integration of extras in those scenes just lends to the whole thing this vapid presence that turns the spectacle into this really cynical show. Otherwise there's everything you can expect from Roland : Nutty pseudo science, lots of talkings head, a really undignified human elements (6 billion died... but she don't need no diapers !) with ambivalent morality and a conga line of atrocious national caricatures.

[fistfulofmetal]

Furious 7 was expectedly ridiculous and tons of fun.

I didn't enjoy it as much as Furious 6, which IMO is the best of the series. 7 seemed to lean pretty hard on being selfaware in it's ridiculousness which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It simply informed a lot of the decisions when it came to the action set pieces.

And of course, the ending.

[Yeti]

Yeah, the ending of Furious 7 had me ugly sobbing.  :'(

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm glad they gave Paul Walker's character a happy ending instead of killing him off and making the movie about getting revenge for his death.

[close]

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Wow. Colin Trevorrow got Star Wars 9. Hell of a career trajectory. Safety Not Guaranteed -> Jurassic World -> a goddamn Star Wars.

[Samson Manhug]

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is my favorite movie of the year so far. It's definitely the first thing I've seen that I actually want to rewatch. It's gorgeously shot, well-scored, filled with beautiful people in beautiful clothes, and makes you feel like you're part of an inside joke for most of the runtime. It's a Guy Ritchie film but in the aforementioned ways it reminds me of Wes Anderson (until the chase in the third act which feels like a Top Gear segment and I mean that as praise.)

It's interesting that they chose to release it a week after Mission Impossible 5. I liked MI5 while I was watching it, but have already forgotten what it was about. It's also strange to me how well reviewed MI5 is compared to UNCLE (both have the same IMDB score.) You can't help but compare them and except for the fact that UNCLE doesn't have Tom Cruise actually hanging off a flying plane, it's a much more interesting, funny, and fun film.

This is the first thing I've seen this year that warranted a 30 minute long conversation with my wife after the movie ended. If you're thinking about seeing it, I think you should. I really recommend it and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.