Oh I'm sorry, Did I Break Your Conversation........Well Allow Me A Movie Thread by S&T

[Kimchi Papi]

I've said it in here several times, when I saw Oldman in True Romance, I was done. Dude is freaking ridiculous. Watch JUST THAT SCENE of the movie, and you'd be ready to pass out. He's a chamelon.

 

[quincy powell]

Its a damn shame Gary Oldman doesnt even have an Academy Award. Definitely one of my favs. Anyone ever seen State of Grace? Loved him there.

Saw Gangster Squad last night...I don't know something was missing. Like the casting was great, acting was great but something was missing. Didn't feel like I enjoyed it after I left the theater.

 

[mjgreatxii]

Its a damn shame Gary Oldman doesnt even have an Academy Award. Definitely one of my favs. Anyone ever seen State of Grace? Loved him there.

Saw Gangster Squad last night...I don't know something was missing. Like the casting was great, acting was great but something was missing. Didn't feel like I enjoyed it after I left the theater.

Same thing for me when watching gangster squad..

 

[lawdog1]

Maybe everyone knew this already, but the first I heard this was today:

J.J. Abrams to Direct Star Wars: Episode VII - IGN
A new report says that J.J. Abrams will in fact direct Star Wars: Episode VII.

Not sure how I feel about this. I like a lot of Abrams' work, but I don't know that I love it (except maybe the first season of Lost). The Star Trek reboot was fine, but nothing that special, IMO. But I guess that odds are good that he'll do a lot better job than George Lucas would have.

 

[CP1708]

The guy that did Alias is gonna do Star Wars!?!?!?!?!?

Jennifer Garner and Bradley Cooper boutta be Jedi's.

 

[duba169]

I stopped caring about the oscars when I found out Kubrick didn't get one for best director or film. And the thrashing that Scorsese took over the years.

Terrible decisions and politics

 

[mronegative]

The way I look at it, those prequels are fresh to me. Anyone who's made a decently successful, big budget, watchable movie, is a huge upgrade from George Lucas. He made good actors bad and half of the movies emotionally dead. Any producers that aren't him and don't give him final say are a huge upgrade. They don't cast Hayden or keep Jar Jar or shoot 90% of the movie on green screen. Any writer that isn't autistic or brain damaged is a huge upgrade. Anyone who understands storytelling or plot or dialogue or pacing...tension...drama...character? Continuity? Consequences and reasoning? ...that's an upgrade.

So yeah, even though I jumped off the JJ bandwagon after Super 8 and Alcatraz, that's a good look. I mean almost anyone you'd know by name is a good look after George, but yeah. Something to look forward to.

 

[CP1708]

Don't you think Lucas actually did really good work on Revenge of the Sith tho? He shorted himself (and us) by screwing up the first 2 movies and not letting Sith be truly special and truly elite with a prime Vader hunting down Jedi like the story was told in the OG, but given what he had already constricted himself too, he did a damn good job cleanin up as much of the story as he could. And he also got MUCH better performances out of Hayden, Portman, Obi Wan, etc. Do you agree or just lump all 3 together and brain ray it out of your mind? Which I wouldn't blame you if you did that.

 

[mronegative]

Nah, I see them each separately. If you let the first two lower your bar enough, Sith is pretty awesome for what it is.

But it's basically just Matrix Revolutions to me. Like how much they hyped up Grievous just have him be this big goofy sick thing that comes and goes way too quick. And better acting =/= good acting. I mean yeah Ewan brought it, and the rest weren't so terrible, but the scene when Anakin kills Padme... Vader Noooo... All the Sith setup... The super easy killing of every Jedi...

I mean, just because it finally had a pace and a motivation to it and an ending and a real plot... Just because they finally did simple film things right, doesn't mean you hand out a gold sticker.

Try and show Revenge of the Sith to someone, and outside of the action scenes watch them roll their eyes and yawn and ***** and laugh at it. It's the only kinda good one, but imagine if The Matrix was a good idea but trash movie with that awesome ending. Then Reloaded was slower, dumber and pushed a couple of its fight scenes to Revolutions.

You'd say Revolutions was a good damn movie.

 

[duba169]

Revolutions is the worst matrix by far. Reloaded wasn't that bad. Just convoluted.

 

[x Buddha Bless x]

Similar to CP, I loved Reloaded. The first open my mind but that sequel was the best Revolutions was trash.

 

[mronegative]

Revolutions is the worst matrix by far. Reloaded wasn't that bad. Just convoluted.

I agree. I loved the action and ideas behind it, but it was just a step down intellectually.

And seeing how they paid off the new ideas from it in Revolutions....

 

[CP1708]

LOVED the scene with the Architect.
LOVED the scene with the Marovingeian. (sp)
Loved the 100 Smiths, the Chateaux, the freeway.

Raised the bar imo, but people held it to the ideal and nostalgia of the original.

 

[quincy powell]

The Matrix sequels were not needed.

 

[mronegative]

Raised the bar imo, but people held it to the ideal and nostalgia of the original.

Nostalgia? 4 years later?

You could just tell...that they were reaching as hard as they could. And that this was very much never meant to be more than 1 film.

Let's just get this outta the way...the fight scenes in Matrix: Reloaded were some of the greatest action scenes in film ever to me. The staircase, the car chase (Trinity on the bike :x), the fight with the Asian dude...even that little 1-2 at the start of the movie. They were so far ahead of their time and they still hold up fine today, even making that tacky techno get over. I could see how some people would think the effects are ehhhh and it's corny now, but every once in a while something will remind of them and I'll hit up youtube real quick.

But outside of the action...this film had so much going for it, but it would just break into long philosophical monologues out of nowhere, just rambling on like one my posts. Momentum be damned. And I'll admit, some of my gripes with Reloaded came from seeing it with new eyes after Revolutions. It was like trying to look at Lost the same way after seeing season 6. As awesome as a Smith army was, knowing how it ends takes from that. It just does for me.

And even on it's own...I'm assuming the Merovingian was the French guy who mind****** chicks and just stood there shooting philosophy bullets at Neo, then siccing his boys on him? No, I was not about that then, and it's still groanworthy now. You could see some of the calculated menace there, but it turned into camp with the editing and blocking, where they'd have everyone stop and let the bad guy talk for 10 minutes, killing all seriousness.

And the architect scene...THAT was a joke to me. All this build up, all this mystery and mythos. Epic battles and prophecies and the fate of everything on the line...all leading to...Colonel Sanders? That was so damn stupid to me. And there were little nuggets of knowledge in there, but the plate was filthy as hell.

There was nothing more fitting than when Will Ferrell went in on it at the MTV Movie Awards.

The script is just halfbaked and overwritten. The Matrix was a philosophical and intellectual story that expressed itself through fantasy violence that evolved and informed on the characters and rules of its world while they were happening. Matrix: Reloaded is big action setpieces with random philosophical speeches and ******** tension and story as an excuse to set them up, all coming to a head with the dumbest speech of all and the filmmakers leaning back like they think they just blew your mind again. I mean...it gets The Avengers treatment from me, where I can just sit through the action, but at least the last hour of Avengers is 1 big action scene and it ends well.

The Matrix: Reloaded is the birth of Lost-speak. That's the birth of kinda talking about something real, but not really and not giving you answers, but telling you the answers will blow your mind, and please keep following me down the rabbithole, but don't get too close cuz you're not ready for this. Oh and it's the most important thing ever, but I can't tell you how or why or what you need to do next...just trust us. Oh and in true Lost fashion, Matrix: Reloaded doesn't have an ending.

The first Matrix was profound. Is profound. Is timeless. It has value without its action scenes, because it's good storytelling. Reloaded tries to be profound by holding its allegiances until the end, where we find out that Neo's wrong, you can only beat The Matrix from within, and that you've got to conform in certain ways to help the most people. But it does so with the stupidest message carriers and writing of the series. Not to mention, every actor in the cast took a step back in their acting.

But that's just me.

 

[japanair21]

So yeah, even though I jumped off the JJ bandwagon after Super 8 and Alcatraz, that's a good look. I mean almost anyone you'd know by name is a good look after George, but yeah. Something to look forward to.

Super 8?! I loved Super 8 man. It was fresh. It was a modern-day Goonies/Stand By Me/ET.

All of the films in the Lecter-lore are fantastic IMO, even Hannibal Rising.

Manhunter is often forgotten many times, but I feel like Tom Noonan as Dollarhyde is just as menacing and terrifying as Hopkins is in the other Lecter films. Brian Cox wasn't bad as Lecter either, but Hopkins was definitely better. In general I feel like the film holds up well.

You don't really have to say anything about Silence, we all know why it's great. Hopkins and Jodie at their best.

Hannibal was really underrated IMO. I saw it when I was about 12 or 13, and Lecter still creeped me the HELL out, because dude was on the loose, not stuck in a prison cell. I didn't recognize that it was Gary Oldman until a few years ago myself, I was like "Wait, he's Mason Verger?!"

Red Dragon was decent, I felt like it was a bit underrated too. It's not nearly as good as Hannibal or Silence, or even the original Manhunter IMO, but it was still good. I love Norton, so it was great for me. The film was made when makeup making people look younger isn't as good as it is today so Lecter looked quite a bit off at times, artificial, but that's nitpicking.

Hannibal Rising wasn't bad, and it was definitely interesting to see a new Lecter-film without Hopkins, but I felt Gaspard Ulliel was good, just not menacing like Hopkins.

 

[big j 33]

I really liked Super 8 but it is what it is.. Abrams marathon watched a bunch of Spielberg and 80s movies then made his own.

If the secrecy over the monster wasn't a selling point then I would have enjoyed it better because it was a disappointment after the build up.

 

[mronegative]

Man, I been soundin picky as hell lately.

All of the kid scenes were amazing. Elle Fanning killed it. It was even funny seeing dude from 7th Heaven.

All of the adults, military, alien and plot stuff, though, was just eughk. And Coach Taylor is my dude too. I think Kev agreed.

 

[japanair21]

That's kind of the point of the whole kids films though. The incompetence of the adults. I'm just someone who's easily pleased when watching films though...

So, I used to watch American Idol back in the day, and I watched an episode yesterday for the first time.

I think I'm in love with Nicky Minaj. I ignored her up until this point just because I found her incredibly annoying.


She's

 

[mronegative]

No, I mean literally, everything except for the kids pretty much sucked in Super 8. And before you tell me, well the whole movie is the kids, I mean everything they ran into. Imagine if the Farellis sucked and weren't scary in The Goonies and there was no treasure and half the movie was the parents looking for the kids. Imagine if ET never came inside, but was in the woods scaring them, until the ending when he comes out, shows he's harmless, tells them to stop being sad and goes home.

Everything outside of the kids just ended up dumb or annoying or pointless or anticlimactic or a waste of time. The way they dealt with the kid's mom. His dad and her dad were stupid. I mean...you're mad cuz he called out sick one day? The actual 'film' was dumb. They built up that footage like it meant something. It meant nothing. The cubes were dumb (that street going crazy scene was cool). The alien's ship was dumb. The guy who crashed into the train turned out to be pointless. The acting was just... bad on purpose?

The kids. The kids deserved a much, much better film. They deserved something. Every time they were on screen, they were magnetic. They had great dialogue, they acted really well and that was a movie that worked. But that's only about 1/3 of the film, scattered around. And everything before, around and after that stuff let all of that down completely. I can't hate this movie, because I really loved the kids in this. This movie has all the emotional heart it needs...just none of the story or execution all leading to an ending that makes no sense next to what came before it.

I'm not comparing it to anything, and I loved what they tried to do. It was just a very badly written script outside of these kids. I understand making the grownups whiney or dumb, but this wasn't that. They had the right ideas, but didn't put it together. They had the cgi scenes down, but nothing that connected them to the story really worked for me. And the alien. I mean they wanted it to be the xenomorph from Alien and E.T. at the same damn time.

It was like they took Freaks and Geeks and stuck it in the middle of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm not a fan, but I understand if those kids were enough for you and the rest didn't bother you.

 

[japanair21]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I don't have a problem with the things you brought up. I recognize and acknowledge them, just don't bother me. The monster is stupid, and I'm not saying it's on the level of ET, but it's the closest thing we'll probably ever get.

 

[big j 33]

I've been meaning to rewatch it and I probably will soon... but the biggest thing that I remember was how perfect Elle Fanning was in the movie.

And just like I had to post Chastain, seeing that grotesque picture in the recent images isn't cutting it. So here's Amanda Seyfried being cute

She's an actress I like but doesn't really warrant talking about her a lot. She's cute, funny, has her moments but certainly not a great actress. She was good on Big Love, she was impressive in Les Mis, and I've never thought she's awful in a movie, but you could replace her with another actress and most of her movies would be exactly the same. I don't think she's exactly turning down Oscar winning roles, so I don't blame her for taking whatever she can get. I'm looking forward to Lovelace to see how she does in that, but she's one of those that I'll always catch her interviews, I'm pleased to see her pop up in a movie, etc.

Plus she was really awkward and funny on Conan and she talked about her love of taxidermy 

 

[mronegative]

^that was my chick when Veronica Mars was still new.
...and when she grew up in Big Love....and Chloe....

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I don't have a problem with the things you brought up. I recognize and acknowledge them, just don't bother me. The monster is stupid, and I'm not saying it's on the level of ET, but it's the closest thing we'll probably ever get.

I get that.

It's like if I wanted that monster killing people side, though, I'd take anything Guillermo del Toro, the stuff in The Mist and the monster from The Host.

If I'm going the other way, I'll take Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes...King Kong and the aliens from District 9.

What other good movie monsters are there?

 

[japanair21]

^that was my chick when Veronica Mars was still new.
...and when she grew up in Big Love....and Chloe....
I get that.

It's like if I wanted that monster killing people side, though, I'd take anything Guillermo del Toro, the stuff in The Mist and the monster from The Host.

If I'm going the other way, I'll take Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes...King Kong and the aliens from District 9.

What other good movie monsters are there?

Movie monsters?

What are we considering monsters?

No Jason Vorhees, Freddy, or Pinhead right?

Cronenberg's The Fly, the monsters from The Thing, Alien, Jaws to an extent, Godzilla, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Predator, Cloverfield, Hellboy's lore, Pan's Labyrinth, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, The Blob, etc.

The Descent, Jeepers Creepers, and especially Sliter had some pretty cool monsters.

Slither is probably my favorite horror film of the past like 20 years. . Michael Rooker as a ginormous monster named Grant Grant? I'm in. . James Gunn is a goddamn genius as far as I'm concerned,

Speaking of, he's doing Guardians of the Galaxy AND that movie Super 43.

 

[CP1708]

Could be some solid movie monsters this year.

Before tho.......I can't think of anything main character. Harry and the Henderson count? I'm drawin a blank.

Sat down and rewatched Savages extended version. Still plays. I like it a lot, I just ****** hate the cop out ending. Benicio was even better than I remember, Salma was actually better than I thought. Travolta bothered me a lil bit. Wife hadn't seen it, and she liked it a lot, until of course the ending.