Films Recently Watched

The Grand Budapest Hotel, this is coming from a big Wes Anderson fan, but I really didn't enjoy this movie at all. With Moonrise Kingdom (and Fantastic mr. Fox, but "that one was for the kids", as I used to think) it went off the cliff.

I had very low expectations and was still disappointed.

  On 4/8/2014 at 8:56 PM, kokoon said:

The Grand Budapest Hotel, this is coming from a big Wes Anderson fan, but I really didn't enjoy this movie at all. With Moonrise Kingdom (and Fantastic mr. Fox, but "that one was for the kids", as I used to think) it went off the cliff.

 

I had very low expectations and was still disappointed.

oh good, good.

I saw the first hour-or-so of Snowpiercer, only to see what all the fuss was about, and

Treasure of the Sierra Madre - 10/10 - b/w, bogart, but it didn't suffer from it's age, it basically kicked ass. cool story-type story, as in, hey let me tell you this crazy story that happened. not that its narrated that way or anything, it just seemed like a realistic series of events. interesting character development

tristram shandy: a cock and bull story - 5/10 - not uncomfortable bad or anything, definitely palatable, it just didn't make me laugh much

i'm alan partridge series 1 - 10/10 - funny comedy. 2 hour miniseries or something, basically a movie.

small apartments - 10/10 - nicely done dark comedy.

porco rosso - 6/10 - relatively weak miyazaki, maybe it was just the english voice dubs

american hustle - when a director apes goodfellas for a story that could have been cool/10

cock & bull story - 8/10 got it by accident trying to get tristram shandy i think. seemed like a late 80s/ early 90s street attitude movie at first, north side south side, fuckin cops, dark footage of rainy streets, people saying "faggot," turns out it was made in '03 and it takes a turn for a kind of poignant dissection of certain disturbing elements of society

Fell asleep last night, gonna finish Snowpiercer now .... I don't know why.

  On 4/9/2014 at 12:39 AM, very honest said:

porco rosso - 6/10 - relatively weak miyazaki, maybe it was just the english voice dubs

Too bad, it's my favorite. I always watched it in original dub though. I don't think I ever watched any anime in english dub.

I quite enjoyed Snowpiercer, it has the dark Korean humour from the directors past work with some cool action and decent visuals, it's no masterpiece but it definitely is not shit.

Grand Budapest Hotel - 9/10 - absolutely loved it, art direction at its best. Willem Dafoe made me chuckle, the acting wasn't the best but the story was awesome. The camera movement is amazing. Loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Captain America Winter Soldier 7/10 - extremely paint by numbers entertaining action/thriller with technically all the right beats. Somehow the character of Captain America actually works still even after 3 movies in.
problems: For being called the Winter Soldier they gave very little character development to this character, mostly told in flashbacks, but barely any insight into who he is now except for a brainwashed, zero charisma/personality assassin. Fell a little flat. In fact it felt like a large section of the movie focusing in on him, rather than throwing him into the action was cut out
other problems: making the 'evil' part of Shield overtly a Hydra off-shoot cheapened/lessened the impact that whole situation needed. Back during the X-files days, part of fun of that how was not knowing who in the US government you could ever trust, anyone could be bad, and it wasn't until much later into the show where the 'bad' people were given a larger context of being in the syndicate. In Winter Soldier they too quickly and neatly divided this rift inside Shield of being a secret group that has existed since WWII. I felt it would have worked much better if it was simply the evil side of shield who enacted some kind of coup d'etat. Although i will admit Gary Shandling whispering 'hail hydra' in that guy's ear was probably the best part of the movie, lol

  On 4/9/2014 at 10:26 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

Captain America Winter Soldier 7/10 - extremely paint by numbers entertaining action/thriller with technically all the right beats. Somehow the character of Captain America actually works still even after 3 movies in.

problems: For being called the Winter Soldier they gave very little character development to this character, mostly told in flashbacks, but barely any insight into who he is now except for a brainwashed, zero charisma/personality assassin. Fell a little flat. In fact it felt like a large section of the movie focusing in on him, rather than throwing him into the action was cut out

other problems: making the 'evil' part of Shield overtly a Hydra off-shoot cheapened/lessened the impact that whole situation needed. Back during the X-files days, part of fun of that how was not knowing who in the US government you could ever trust, anyone could be bad, and it wasn't until much later into the show where the 'bad' people were given a larger context of being in the syndicate. In Winter Soldier they too quickly and neatly divided this rift inside Shield of being a secret group that has existed since WWII. I felt it would have worked much better if it was simply the evil side of shield who enacted some kind of coup d'etat. Although i will admit Gary Shandling whispering 'hail hydra' in that guy's ear was probably the best part of the movie, lol

yet a 7/10????

I'm glad they brought back Hydra to the movies, they're pretty much the go to bad guys in comics when there isn't some stupid marketing crossover going on. It provides a constant faceless threat that should help, especially on Shield where apparently they've been planning this all season. Shield needs Hydra for someone to fight, like GI Joe needed Cobra.

The machine.

Pretty decent scfi flick. Has the bird from arrow in it. Not only is she fit but a pretty good actress.

7/10

Grand Budapest Hotel

Funniest Wes Anderson movie by far/10

So I give it an 8 overall. Ralph Fiennes nailed it.

the machine - 0/10 - excessive lens flare covering up cheap decorations, "sci-fi" music that sounds like warez keygen/crack music with some cheap allusions to blade runner, sexed up emo robot with tru feels, non existent characterization, acting or sensible dialogue, script that you can predict completely after the first 10 minutes...basically a derivative and banal piece of shit made to please some cyber punk neckbeards.

Snowpiercer. 7/10

Interesting concept and some good fights. But a shit ending. Didn't even relise it was Chris Evans until he took his hat off

All my lols at Snowpiercer aside - I thought it really was a terrible film. The set design was beautiful, very well done, so definite credit to those people. Not so much to the visual fx team, the cgi was rather outdated, but personally I do not mind that when more important things are done right - writing, acting, pacing, characters. I can watch a Lexx episode and take it seriously because they knew how to build up some tension even with Tomb Raider I style computer graphics. But Snowpiercer ...

The setting and general idea is fine for a sci fi movie, although absolutely illogical as many have pointed out, but I think it is based on a comic book, so the filmmakers are not to credit for that. The writing and proceeding of the story we see in the film is a disaster, the actors are all shit (except Tilda Swindon who happens to be in this film because ... ?! - and not even she is doing an above-average job, also her scenes seem like she thought it was a dark comedy or something). Chris Evans I only knew from Sunshine where he's doing a superior job, all other films starring him are apparently some shit I don't watch like Transmorphozords or Fastastic Explosion League 3D.... which makes me think I'm not really the target audience for Snowpiercer either. But I'm still going to keep bashing it for insulting my intelligence. Every single action sequence seems to have been ripped straight off some other movie that was successful at some point in time. Like "Remember that cool bit from that one movie? Let's put that in also, even though we don't know how" ... I saw bits from The Matrix, then I believe that ear-ringing temporary deafness bit from Saving Private Ryan was in there, then another bit from some fighting sequence in Blade or something. But it looks like the early afternoon television version of a rip-off, not the "I see this at the cinema"-version. If they had at least done it right ... the story and limited set could have been a great place for creativity, like they used that one single room in Cube for a whole 90 minutes. But I never ever had a feeling of "wow they're moving on to the next section of the train", it was all fluent, but in a terrible, oblivious way. I'm usually not the kind of person who points out logical mistakes in a film, I mostly don't care when it serves the purpose of telling an exciting story, but Snowpiercing was almost insultingly stupid at times. Cannibalism is not worse than eating bugs because that's gross and what Asians do? Fuck off. Really, this film was one of the worst I've seen in recent history in comparison to its general rating. Positive reviews my ass - shit writing, shit pacing, shit characters nobody cares about, stupidity all over the place, shit predictable ending, shit movie all together.

yep, you nailed it like twice over man, hope the film makers read what you have written.

THEY HAVE MUCH SHAME!

the immigrant - 6/10 - this director is masterful in setting the ambiance and the feel of of the scene. with sound, music, lighting and set decorations he can really conjure something special, but yet again he's bottlenecked by the superficial script. i could look past it in "two lovers" because phoenix basically carried the whole film but here, the weak, underdeveloped story just doesn't cut it.

  On 4/14/2014 at 4:58 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

they live - ??/10

 

is this even a thing? plotholes out the wazoo, edited into the ground. would watch again

You have to watch with the shades on, man

[youtubehd]_0b5y4lGunk[/youtubehd]

didn't expect to like it. loved it.

joe - 2/10 - oooh, so gritty and so irl. fuck off with this pointless shit already.

a kid almost dies, goes to heaven, see jesus and some other people, comes back, tells everyone about it and causes quite the controversy. he also can't quite explain what jesus looks like, until another girl has the same trip and paints a portrait of jesus that is "him"

it's based on this story and is supposed to bring warmth and joy to you during this easter season. personally, i found it a little too cliche and cheesy.

and for whatever reason, i was very hungry in the theater. ended up eating 3 hotdogs, a small bag of popcorn and a huge pepsi

The power of christ compelled you.

  On 4/15/2014 at 9:04 AM, data said:

[youtubehd]_0b5y4lGunk[/youtubehd]

 

didn't expect to like it. loved it.

I loved Eric Wareheim's dances, Manson's acting, and that bleeding guy's contribution to the music. Pretty good.

  On 4/12/2014 at 3:57 AM, eugene said:

made to please some cyber punk neckbeards.

this must be true because I really enjoyed it.