Movie News, Reviews, and Discussion Super-Thread

[brawndolicious]

You're talking about the 1955 version with Alec Guinness, right?

I never even heard of that one before. Of course that's hardly a "modern period movie". Honestly I think I passed out halfway through last night and it was so good that not seeing it all at once was a tragedy.

[Steve Contra]

Oh god I hate the Tom Hanks Ladykillers so much.

[Tasty]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-ryan-reynolds-deadpool-858018

People who said this would bomb a few pages ago, come get your crow.

[Joe Molotov]

TBF man of steel doesn't have batman in it

Ya, if you combine the RT scores from the last Batman and Superman movies, this should get like a 150%.

[Dickie Dee]

Key and Peele HYPE

[Great Rumbler]

[Madrun Badrun]

what was that? 

[Great Rumbler]

dunno

[ToxicAdam]

Did they hire the King Fury guys to do that teaser?

[team filler]

A Band Called Death (2013) A documentary on the 1970s African American punk trio Death, and their new-found popularity decades after they disbanded. 

this and searching for sugar man

[Stoney Mason]

Watched the hateful eight. I could go on a long post about it but I'm not going to.


Simply put it's very good as I had no doubt it would be. It's everything you expected from Taratino at this point and everybody shines in the movie. The things in it are always the things in Tarantino movies and its why he's my favorite director who has come around since I started watching movies. Nobody creates tension like he does.

It's not a pulp fiction but it could easily be his second or third film right along with Jackie Brown for me.

[VomKriege]

Top 50 movies of all time  (whatever it is and if such a thing can be established) is a humongous bar to clear. I'm sure any respectable movie buff could name off the top of his head that many more essential works from any prominent national movie industry. A Tarantino movie breaking the top 1000 or 2000 would already be a major compliment.

[chronovore]

No, that would have been better than that.

[VomKriege]

It's an old fan film. They left out the worst parts.

[Yeti]

I'm pretty sure this is just a bad fantrailer. The lady does resemble Gal Gadot though, and props on their costume.

[Stoney Mason]

Tarantino films are the closest equivalent to novels. And for me enjoyment of a novel is based on the characters and the things they say and do. So his movies don't follow any sort of easy x>y>z formula. If you really like the individual characters in any of his movies and can either relate to them or just think they or cool or interesting, that will potentially elevate one film over another. I can't really argue with that line of thinking.

[Tasty]

Boston crime movies

[Rahxephon91]

Reminds me of this.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/british-movie/n13054

[Tasty]

Batfleck

[Madrun Badrun]

Damn he looks good in a suit vest.  Also hyper-cautious batman is the best batman.

[chronovore]

CHEAP TUESDAY in Idaho, so I saw the final Hunger Games movie with my mom. We saw all the rest of them when I stayed with her last year, so this was a nice way to finish it. Jennifer Lawrence really does make the most of some pretty sparse pickings. I can confirm, having seen these in reverse order except for this last movie, that they really do  get a lot worse over time.

The best parts of it are the character interactions, which is pretty swell, all things considered. Sadly, there is a lot of out-of-control bullshit running rampant just about everywhere else. Very little of the world or its technology make any kind of internally consistent sense, and where even a throwaway line could have shored up some confusion, it's clear that no-one really gives a damn about making anything consistent. Surveillance State has been the catchphrase since the beginning of the series, but they intentionally go walking down the middle of city roads whenever they can. Sometimes they set off traps and worry about it alerting nearby patrols, other times they'll set off traps and then settle down for a nap. I'm not even joking.

In the end, it's pretty predictable, and I'm happy I saw it through to the end, but I should've just watched Battle Royale again.

[ToxicAdam]

Speaking of young teen garbage, my son made me take him to go see The 5th Wave.

It sets up very nicely (hey, there's Ron Livingston getting work!), as the alien invasion is one of the more "realistic" approaches I've seen on film. But then the payoff is one of most contrived and rushed movies I've seen in recent memory. Eye-rolling foreshadowing that gives away anything resembling a surprise and plot conveniences that are so cliche, you think you might be watching a clever satire on the genre. 

[benjipwns]

I've been ripping through my Amazon watchlist that I piled up full of garbage months back since I can watch it with headphones on the kindle fire while doing data entry and other stuff. Mostly documentaries and such for now since they're easy to just listen to and glance at.

First I rewatched Age of Ultron because I felt like I forgot half of it...nope. It's well paced though actually after watching it again. It's just such a let down and waste of Red Reddington especially compared to the original trailer which promised a real threatening Ultron. He never seems to top his first appearance.

The Pentagon Wars - HBO "docudrama" about the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Kesley Grammer, Cary Elwes, John C. McGinley, Viola Davis. Very amusing, funny.

There's No Place Like Utopia - From the creator of "Dreams of My REAL Father" and was basically a half good movie really. Arguably the most compelling part was his interviewing some "illegals" extensively and then talk to African Americans in Chicago who sounded like Trump supporters. But he didn't flesh that out. Really, he did some good stuff touching on the cusp of poverty, including some African American women who were basically handing him the "welfare holds us back in some ways" on a silver platter but he ignored it to run back to conservative pundits who talked about drugs and failure of the homes and so on. Doing that with most every subject

Also, the best part was he went to Bill Ayers house to try and give him a copy of Dreams of My REAL Father but they weren't home, so then he went to Michelle Obama's childhood home and her mom was actually there and he gave her a copy of it.

Second best part was he was wandering around some abandoned projects in Detroit and some guy living in them threw a bottle at him.

Too Big To Fail - The perfect encapsulation of how Hollywood would tackle the financial crisis.
Goldman Sachs: Master of the World - The perfect encapsulation of how an indie French documentarian would tackle the financial crisis and include anti-semitism.

Ghost Exchange - About HFT/Flash Crash, had much better interview cast that many of these financial ones I watched.

Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve - Holy shit guys, do you have any idea what the Fed is doing?!? I wonder if there's any libertarian writings on this. Or if any former Congressman have looked into it.

Something Ventured - Nice little history of how venture capital started out as a thing. Includes like ten guys all going "looked at Apple, said, fuck no...sigh..." Also, the most awesomely crazy weird dude ever in Tom Perkins.

The 9/11 Faker - Some Spanish chick pretends she was on the floors of the WTC hit by a planes, but survived, and knew this one semi-famous guy and stuff. Except she was a wealthy socialite in business class at the time. Whoops.

Chasing Madoff - Barf. Just read the book: No One Would Listen. Or some other documentary I forget. Unless you want to see like 25 minutes of Markopolos loading guns and checking his car for bombs, and like zero minutes spent on Madoff's scheme or the SEC's failures.

A two-fer from my top favorite documentary maker:
Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi
The Trials of Ted Haggard
First one goes around the Bible Belt and looks at various parts of the evangelical movement, interviewing them nicely (Alexandra's always nice to her subjects), seeing crazy christian stuff, HOW CHURCH IS COOL, "where else would a 27 year old male want to be on a Saturday night?", etc. Ted Haggard is fairly prominent. Which leads into the second one where after his whole meth/male escorts thing comes out and he's "exiled" from the church, he lets her back to follow his life around as he moves from supporter houses to motels to an apartment and looks for a real job and he talks about how utterly broken he is and failed his family and church and god.

Khodorkovsky -  About a post-Soviet Russian Oligarch who tells Putin to his face that he's basically an authoritarian jerkface, so Putin has him arrested and sent to jail in Siberia to show him otherwise! Interviews with all sorts of people about how he set up the first banks and bought oil companies and such before the Putin thing. One former partner says "he supposed to be genius wizard, yes? Then he does that to Putin televised, hmm?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Menatep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Nevzlin

Crossed paths with Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, in turning over his oil company to the latter, who were the subjects of the book Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder that I had read not too long ago.

[Beezy]

While My Shamisen Gently Weeps

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

yes, that's a real trailer

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comes out two weeks before Kubo, anyone wanna bet which makes more money?

[close]

[Madrun Badrun]

Jennifer Garner still hot.

[Great Rumbler]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

yes, that's a real trailer

[close]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

comes out two weeks before Kubo, anyone wanna bet which makes more money?

[close]

Two Garfield movies was already more than enough.

[Stoney Mason]

Watched The Revenant.

Didn't really do a lot for me. It's beautifully shot but there isn't a lot of meat on the bones. The pacing is super slow but its not the good kind of super slow where characterization occurs. I'm surprised this is nominated for Oscars.

[toku]

[brob]

Jacques Rivette died so here's a nice interview with him where he offers some opinions on various films of the time: http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/french-cinema-present-and-past/rivette-2/

[Steve Contra]

Jacques Rivette died so here's a nice interview with him where he offers some opinions on various films of the time: http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/french-cinema-present-and-past/rivette-2/

This is fucking great.  I like that Face/Off of all movies got him rustled.

[Madrun Badrun]

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/01/29/captain-america-civil-war-is-testing-through-the-roof

[toku]

[chronovore]

http://www.slashfilm.com/10-cloverfield-lane-viral-marketing/

Neat stuff.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Shit got real in the comments for that.

My hype kinda dwindled after the rumors/reports that it wasn't filmed as a sequel and has had the cloverfield connection stuffed in. Hopefully that's not true but if it is I'm out

[Quaker]

I haven't seen the trailer but knowing it's Dan Trachtenberg's debut featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead() somehow related to Cloverfield and co-written by the Whiplash dude is enough to pique my interest and have me cautiously optimistic. Especially with it coming out of nowhere and being dropped in a slow month like March.

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

oh snap! Damien Chazelle wrote for that, shit yeah I'm interested. He was the sole writer for Grand Piano, a pretty great De Palma knockoff that incidentally, was also a confined space thriller. And I guess Whiplash was pretty good too I guess.

Get HYPE!

[toku]

yep this one definitely not gonna have a happy ending

[Madrun Badrun]

Holy shit that looks great

[Quaker]

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Blue Ruin. Pretty cool, stripped down revenge movie that kind of strikes then same tension that's in something like No Country For Old Men. My only gripe is I think I remember it going a bit over the top right at the very end. It's on Netflix (U.S.).

EDIT: Derp, forgot to mention that the reason I brought it up was because Green Room is the directorial follow up to that.

[Bebpo]

Watched Turbo Kid.  It's ok.  It tries to be a real movie unlike Kung Fury, yet it kind of fails because the makers don't really have the talent to make a real movie.  Like Kung Fury, the 80s nods are fun and the first 20 mins of 80's Mad Max is a good watch.  But then it struggles to maintain the full 90 min runtime once the joke's run out and the characters are flat.  Wasn't terrible, but not quite good either.

[BobFromPikeCreek]

Watched Turbo Kid.  It's ok.  It tries to be a real movie unlike Kung Fury, yet it kind of fails because the makers don't really have the talent to make a real movie.  Like Kung Fury, the 80s nods are fun and the first 20 mins of 80's Mad Max is a good watch.  But then it struggles to maintain the full 90 min runtime once the joke's run out and the characters are flat.  Wasn't terrible, but not quite good either.

Yeah, I was pretty so-so on it too. Had some nice costumes and gore though.

[Phoenix Dark]

holy fuck

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

and a great soundtrack.

Ip Man 3 is in theaters, playing in a lot of American cities, check it out if you get the chance. Martial arts films benefit enormously from the bigger canvas of a theater, and this one is no different, except this one has Mike Tyson speaking hilarious sounding Cantonese intermittently, that's pretty new. Its pretty much in line with previous entries in the series, so you know, Donnie Yen acts as modestly as possible (he does a better job here though I thought), lots of people getting speed punched into oblivion, and of course there's some evil foreign people as well. This entry is less xenophobic, less overtly patriotic, and more focused on the main character's domestic life, all of which I really quite liked.

[Beezy]

I had no idea that an Ip Man 3 was being made. I need to see this.

[Take My Breh Away]

Had to chill out after a hospital examination today and stay "Upright". So ran through the Sky Box selection.

I was put through the boredom of SPECTRE last year so Kingsman: The Secret Service was a nice reminder that spy movies can be fun. It's still quintessentially Mark Millar toned down by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman again but it makes it a lot more earnest and fun. It's wonderfully meta about the spy genre without going straight into parody along with some actual tension. And of course, that Church scene that everyone forgot on their best of 2015 lists because it was a victim of the January dumping ground and critics waving their flags over the violence and "class warfare". It was a fun ride. Though not as memorable as Kick Ass.   

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I love most of them seem to miss that Colin Firth's character is motivated by the need to change Kingsman from old ways of thinking and old money. He's trying to recruit from the working class and change how they think because they are increasingly being outfoxed by the modern world as the violent death of "Lancelot" shows at the start of the film. While Samuel L. Jackson's villain created his own wealth and empire with modern technology but is so in love with the wealth divide he sees the proletariat as a virus that needs to be erased violently. Critics missing subtle pro-proletariat messaging as a whole as a theme and basing criticism on seeing "Working Class" characters in unfavorable light early in the film and Regan-Era technology

[close]

Second up was John Wick. It got such a low key cinema release in Europe around the same time as Fury Road. I only spotted it today on demand. Good lord what a film. Outright intense, unbelievably well choreographed and scripted. That lighting and photography is nothing short of amazing. The world building, the way the underground is so connected and has its own currency. The whispers that John Wick is less a human and more a force of nature at the start of the film building tension. Such a good film.    

[tiesto]

Saw Hail Caesar and didn't really like it much. Some cool cinematography and choreographed scenes (a synchronized swimming part in particular was cool) but the movie was a meandering mess with absolutely no tension or drama whatsoever. There are several simultaneous storylines going on but they come and go without any sort of drama and are easily forgotten. Looking at reviews it seems critics love it and the average cinemagoer hated it... probably one of those 'too clever for its own good' things...

[benjipwns]

I was put through the boredom of SPECTRE last year so Kingsman: The Secret Service was a nice reminder that spy movies can be fun. It's still quintessentially Mark Millar toned down by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman again but it makes it a lot more earnest and fun. It's wonderfully meta about the spy genre without going straight into parody along with some actual tension. And of course, that Church scene that everyone forgot on their best of 2015 lists because it was a victim of the January dumping ground and critics waving their flags over the violence and "class warfare". It was a fun ride. Though not as memorable as Kick Ass.   

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I love most of them seem to miss that Colin Firth's character is motivated by the need to change Kingsman from old ways of thinking and old money. He's trying to recruit from the working class and change how they think because they are increasingly being outfoxed by the modern world as the violent death of "Lancelot" shows at the start of the film. While Samuel L. Jackson's villain created his own wealth and empire with modern technology but is so in love with the wealth divide he sees the proletariat as a virus that needs to be erased violently. Critics missing subtle pro-proletariat messaging as a whole as a theme and basing criticism on seeing "Working Class" characters in unfavorable light early in the film and Regan-Era technology

[close]

There are plenty of valid complaints about Kingsman but some of the more prominent ones I had read at the time seemed so off along these lines. I remember a number that didn't get that it was a tongue-in-cheek, everyones in on the wink-wink jokes/unrealistic, homage like Hot Fuzz instead of an actual parody of the genre. (A lot of the training scenes in particular are quite serious in tone. Same with Firth's musings on the past.) The dinner scene with Jackson and Firth pretty much explicitly lays it out, the love of crazy gadgets and insane master plans and how unfortunate it is that you "have" to grow up...

There's also the fun of Jackson's characters personal reaction to the slightest gore or violence and the films depiction of the same

[toku]

'Deadpool' is the world's most violent and vulgar Bugs Bunny cartoon

[Yeti]

[Bebpo]

Saw Hail! Cesar and despite being a huge Coen Brother stan, I gotta say it's the weakest film they've done in the last 5-10 years, but that's mainly because they've been on such a hot streak for a while.  Hail! Cesar is still a good movie, but the beats just feel too self-indulgent hollywood-for-hollywood that it feels a bit too much like the Coen Brothers got tunnel vision on making a movie that they love and not one for the audience who isn't necessarily them.  On paper all the subplots and story structure seem like they should work, but the film lacks something pulling it all together.  Still worth a watch. 

Saw Hail Caesar and didn't really like it much. Some cool cinematography and choreographed scenes (a synchronized swimming part in particular was cool) but the movie was a meandering mess with absolutely no tension or drama whatsoever. There are several simultaneous storylines going on but they come and go without any sort of drama and are easily forgotten. Looking at reviews it seems critics love it and the average cinemagoer hated it... probably one of those 'too clever for its own good' things...

Yeah, I definitely think it's a movie that's "too clever".  Like I'm sure you can write on essay on all the parallelism between what's going on in the Cesar film and the pieces the other films and how they all relate to the main character's (Brolin) story and hollywood at the time, etc..etc...; but a great film is one that can be clever like that and still pull off the surface level entertaining tale for a general audience, and it kind of fails at that.

[Bebpo]

Man, thinking back about the Coen brother's recent catalog:

Inside Llewyn Davis - Great, wonderful look at the early days of folk and karma; beautifully shot and fantastic Oscar Isaac performance, and the music is fantastic like O'Brother.
A Serious Man - Hilariously great although I hate the non-end ending.  But the rabbi stuff is so good.
True Grit - I can't remember anything about this remake, except that it was good and entertaining. 
Burn After Reading - I love this movie and think it's debate-ably their best silly comedy. 
No Country for Old Men - Really good serious film.

[fistfulofmetal]

Probably gonna be seeing Hail Cesar later today. Not super interested in it but whatevs.

[benjipwns]

There's something that hurts about the "from the studio that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean" tagline for that.

[benjipwns]

Don't get too subtle with the Justice League tease there Zack:

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[close]

[benjipwns]

Get ur hashtags:

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Tony blockin dat gunshot 

[close]

[Steve Contra]

Get ur hashtags:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tony blockin dat gunshot 

[close]

#teampass

[fistfulofmetal]

Hail Cesar was enjoyable but it was super light on any sort of ... anything other than interesting characters.

Tilda Swinton was fantastic.

[toku]

[Joe Molotov]

I've already seen the superior adaptation The Raid: Redemption and it's sequel, Dredd.