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The Last Movie You Watched; And how was it?
Topic Started: Mar 29 2011, 10:37 AM (20,107 Views)
Asfan
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I was told Blade Runner would be good. Why was there only like one interesting character and awful and dull Harrison Ford noir voice-overs and almost no excitement at all? Pretty disappointing.
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Snowman
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^ The book is better than the movie, and also very short. I think I read it in one sitting. And it's like, really good. The movie is barely an "adaptation" of the book -- huge parts were either removed or changed for the movie. I don't know if you read much, but really, it's short and infinitely better than the movie, so you should read it.

That said, I really like the movie, visually. Cyberpunk stuff is a cool look.

Also, just saw The Force Awakens. I really liked it, but it had way too much in common with A New Hope. I guess it wasn't "really, I promise it's not Khan!" bad, but still. I think the next two can take it in a new direction. But yeah it was really good, looking forward to the next ones.
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DarkFlashlight
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I never liked Blade Runner either. It was like someone fleshed out a world and then just kinda made up a random story last minute to make it a viable script.
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Asfan
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Snowman
Dec 23 2015, 06:45 AM
^ The book is better than the movie, and also very short. I think I read it in one sitting. And it's like, really good. The movie is barely an "adaptation" of the book -- huge parts were either removed or changed for the movie. I don't know if you read much, but really, it's short and infinitely better than the movie, so you should read it.
Read? Books?
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Snowman
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Yeah, that's what I figured :p.
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Romanticide
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I finally saw a movie. In a theater, no less!

No points for guessing it was Star Wars.


The Force Awakens
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tfghost92
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Romanticide
Jan 5 2016, 10:31 PM
I finally saw a movie. In a theater, no less!

No points for guessing it was Star Wars.


The Force Awakens


Spoiler
Edited by tfghost92, Jan 6 2016, 09:18 PM.
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kmr95
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(spoiler-free I swear!!!!!!!!!!!)

Regarding the making of the 8th episode, Rian Johnson is going to direct it. He directed Looper and arguably the best Breaking Bad episode, Ozymandias (S5 E14). Looper was an excellent movie and he really brought an interesting sci-fi realism to it. Who knows if he's going to bring a sort of sci-fi realism to Star Wars, but I think he's going to bring something unique to the table. He's got a lot to work with and I think the 8th movie should be even better than this one. JJ Abrams set the tone for the new trilogy and I hope future directors share his vision somewhat, but I also think we need something more new, and I believe the next movie is in great hands with Rian Johnson. I think he'll bring a much needed originality to Star Wars and I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out.
Edited by kmr95, Jan 7 2016, 03:58 AM.
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Asfan
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More non-Star Wars reviews, but I'll probably see it soon-ish:

Unfriended
This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment watch. I was reading this article (they got the best scene right imo, though the Wild Tales one is right there with it) and remembered that people were talking about how Unfriended wasn't bad and how it would be interesting to see if it was actually better to watch on a computer than in a theater. So I decided to try that out. To be honest, the movie started out kind of dull. It took quite a while for it to get started beyond "this classmate of ours died a year ago today and we can't get this random person out of our Skype session." Once it started going though, it was actually not bad and had some pretty interesting stuff. The scene from that article was definitely the best of the movie and maybe even better than any of the scenes from It Follows. Watching all these friends find out all the awful stuff they've done to each other was pretty fun. It's pretty much a movie where you end up hating everyone, save for maybe one or two people, so that was cool. I wouldn't tell you to go out of your way to watch this, but I do kind of think watching it on my computer was a better experience than it would have been in a movie theater, so if you're interested in seeing a fairly short movie like that, this could be one.

Half Nelson
This had been on my watch list for quite some time. So long that I forgot about it and only remembered it when I was taking a random look to see what was there. And I thought, sure, I'll watch a movie with a rugged, crack/cocaine-addicted teacher who is Ryan Gosling. Why not? It turned out to be a really nice twist on the white-teacher-goes-into-inner-city-school-and-saves-black-student(s)-from-their-future, where the white teacher needs the black student to save him as much as she needs him to save her. Gosling was his usual good self, and his counterpart, Shareeka Epps, was right there with him. The characters were great. It would have been very easy to reduce the two main characters into something slightly more complex than caricatures, but they were both fully developed (into things both expected and unexpected). My only complaint is that they cast Denis O'Hare and he was in like three or four short scenes. I mean, I guess he wasn't as well known when the film was made as he is today, but man. That character could have been really good too. But still, good movie, great cast, great characters.

Also, it was fun to see some of Prezbo's kids in another classroom setting. Though I guess this was actually released before season 4 of The Wire, so I guess that was Ryan Gosling's students in class with Prezbo.

Brooklyn
I had really high expectations going into this one. Maybe a little too high, so I was disappointed a little bit. The highs were just as good as what I had hoped for, but they weren't as frequent as I'd expected. Saoirse Ronan's performance was good, and at times great, but I felt like she didn't have all that many scenes that required a great actress. I was impressed by Emory Cohen, whom I'd only previously seen in The Place Beyond the Pines. He was such an asshole in that one (that kind with the rich dad but acted all ghetto), I was glad to see he could pull of the kinda shy, charming, working-class guy. But basically, I was pretty disappointed in the first act. The romance portion of the movie was wonderful and sweet and nice, but before that, it was a lot of dull and kind of depressing and not all that interesting. For me, the film took a little too long to hit its stride. Once Emory Cohen came along though (second act), most of my problems with the movie went away. Even in the third act, where there's a lot less Emory Cohen, it was still a compelling story (arguably because of his character). The climax was probably the best scene of the movie, which is always a nice thing, and the ending was also extremely well done. I'm seldom happy when movies leave their characters at crossroads and don't resolve the problem, and I definitely would not have been okay with that in this one. The way they ended it made the decision she made, make even more sense than I'd hoped for and expected.

Side note: I didn't realize until well after seeing this that Saoirse Ronan was the Girl with the Mexico Tattoo in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Huh.
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Asfan
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I saw Star Wars! I think it was a little overhyped but the new characters were compelling and there is good potential for the coming movies. Daisy Ridley was awesome though and I think she could be Star Wars' best character. I thought maybe it was unrealistic that she could beat Kylo Ren her first time using a light saber but maybe that will be explained later. Overall, solid movie, and I am excited to see what they make of the rest of it.

And here's my review for Carol from my Letterboxd (a little formal for here and for a different audience but whatevs):

Disappointing. The screenplay was a problem. The characters were dull, cold, timid, reserved, and generally uninteresting. When they were allowed to display some kind of emotion, they showed sparks of excitement and personality. Those moments were few. I never bought how fast Carol and Therese fell in love. (Was it love? Or just infatuation mixed with a desire for love?) The film took very little time to explore the characters beyond their relationships. We don't know who these characters are to anyone outside of each other and their other relationships.

Everyone's heard the rave reviews of Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, but I was less convinced. At times, they showed flashes of expected brilliance. Carol's speech near the end to her husband was a (the?) highlight of the movie. Much of Therese and Carol's time together was just like the characters though: cold, timid, reserved, and even sterile and antiseptic. It just never seemed to click with them. It truly felt like two straight women playing lesbians. Is that a product of their 1950s environment? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the majority of their relationship felt passionless. This might have been the straightest gay story (or adaptation of a gay story) I've seen, and I've seen multiple episodes of Modern Family.

The thing is, there were parts to like about Carol. It was pretty to look at, if familiar. Cliches were as infrequent as emotion. Funny enough, these strengths are reflections of the weaknesses rather than opposition thereof. It was all very precise and controlled. Some of the scenes, especially the ones near the end, did show great potential of what could have been. It's just a shame that for the first hour and a half, we got something else entirely.
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Asfan
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TRIPLE POST

The Big Short
This one was kinda weird. Most people seem to like it a lot, and I get it. It took an important-yet-kinda-boring topic and made it fairly easy to understand while creating a couple of good characters as the moral (and morally conflicted) center. Some of the film people I know thought it wasn't very good, and I get it. Outside of Christian Bale's character, just about all of them are either over-the-top or preachy. The editing made itself a bit too noticeable. Steve Carrell's character had some interesting backstory and quirks, enough to make for a decent stand-alone character, but I thought it seemed like he was mainly meant to be in the role of the Greek chorus. Ryan Gosling played the arrogant, I'm-right-you're-wrong-deal-with-it role to perfection, but didn't have much to do beyond explain why Wall St. is awful. The movie did really feel like a docudrama with some neat gimmicks (you won't see Margot Robbie in a bathtub and Selena Gomez in Vegas breaking down an economic crisis anywhere else), but that detracts from the immersive experience I enjoy in great movies. So yeah, I'm in between. There was a lot of good stuff, but the gimmicks and dearth of strong characters brought it down a bit.

Mustang
This is a Turkish film from France (what) about five sisters who get locked up in their own house by their uncle after they were seen playing with boys. It plays out not too differently from how you would expect: the girls try to subvert the patriarchy of their town (with some conflicted help from their female relatives) but struggle to do so. If you want to see a feminist movie about how much male oppression sucks, this isn't a bad choice. It does a good job of making you feel feelings (especially anger and sadness, like in Inside Out). I wouldn't say it is super notable though.

The Danish Girl
This is an incredibly mediocre movie held together by the superglue that is Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander. The characters themselves may be slightly better than they have been given credit for (especially Vikander's, whose internal conflict may have been the only compelling part of the movie), but they are really made by the actors. The story was so bland for what it could have been. The ending was awful. People talk about this movie screaming "Oscar bait" to them, but the only thing it has in common with those movies is it being a timely period piece and mimicking the visual style. I expected to feel similar to this as I felt toward The Theory of Everything, with it being a slightly above average movie elevated by some great performances. Really, it was a below average movie elevated to about average by some great performances. At least I now know that Eddie Redmayne is hung, which I would not have otherwise guessed.

Trumbo
This was a pretty good movie for a while with plenty of good one-liners. The problem is that everything it needed to say, was said in the first hour-plus. The second half was repetitive, both of the first half and of itself. It also felt a little preachy at the back end, but I don't know of anyone who now thinks McCarthyism was a halfway good idea, so that was weird. Bryan Cranston was good in the role (I have no idea how true he was to the real Dalton Trumbo), but I don't think that performance would have received an Oscar nomination if it were by a lesser known actor. But hey, Matt Damon got nominated for The Martian, so who knows what really goes through their minds.

Anomalisa
Stop motion is a fun little technique. A movie like this would have been perfectly fine with live action, but somehow, the animation technique elevated it for me. Along with it being cool to watch, it added to the surrealism and allowed for the clever use of voice acting. The only real problem I had with this one is that I felt like there was something more that was missing. I don't know what it was. Maybe I just wanted more (which would be funny, since I thought this was also a good-not-great movie, though somewhat original and very interesting). I don't know how this works, but the movie felt very authentic to me even though I don't necessarily think they were. I guess different aspects of it are heart and brain parts. I've heard multiple theories about what happened in it from co-workers, so if any of you see it, I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it.
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Snowman
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I liked The Big Short too.

I also watched Her recently and it was really good. Definitely one of my favorite movies of the past several years.
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Asfan
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IT'S OSCARS DAY which means I get to talk about the Academy being dumb and how much better the show would be if they just let me choose everything.

Most recent movies I've seen:

The Hateful Eight: As always with Tarantino, great storytelling. I read a review the day I was going to see it that complained about how it took about an hour for them to even get to the cabin, but Tarantino really made it work. This one had compelling dialogue, interesting characters, and good action. Also, I it was only showing at the Alamo when I saw it, so I got to eat chips and queso during it, so that probably improved the experience too. Great movie, definitely in my top ten for the year.

The Revenant: Honestly, I wasn't expecting all that much from this, and I got about what I expected. The cinematography was fantastic. Best of the year, for sure. I really feel like the movie as a whole was more style than substance though. Leo was good, but I don't think he even gave the best male performance of the year, let alone best overall (and the women were a lot stronger this year than the men). The beginning was exciting, but so much of it was just Leo surviving out in the wilderness. I agree with those who said it could have been under two hours, rather than the 2.5-hour run time they gave us. It looked impressive, but I felt underwhelmed. So kind of like Birdman last year.

45 Years: Here we got the style and substance. One of my very favorite movies this year. I think Charlotte Rampling gave the performance of the year and Tom Courtenay was the best of the men (Oscar snub alert). BUT BACK TO RAMPLING. Her performance was very subdued but incredibly powerful and nuanced. And I usually hate when people describe performances in that fashion, but there's really no other way to do it for her. Her facial expressions, gestures, intonation, everything. It all worked perfectly. The two actors had fantastic chemistry and probably each elevated the other's performance. Andrew Haigh really stepped outside of his niche for this one and he was as good as always. Maybe as good as ever. The ending was one of the best I've ever seen, and right up there with Phoenix for the best one this year. The film was just in the "very good" range for most of it, but the ending really put it over the edge and brought it up from one of the most technically impressive of the year (I didn't even mention the impeccable cinematography but now I just did so yeah) to one of the best. Highly, highly recommended.

Bridge of Spies: This is a very standard international diplomacy film. It's very Steven Spielberg and doesn't really do anything you haven't seen before. If you're interested in watching it, you probably won't walk away disappointed, because it is pretty well done, but I wouldn't expect to be wowed. Predictable story, familiar characters, recycled tropes abound.

Beasts of No Nation: NOTE: I have not seen Son of Saul yet, but this is the most disturbing movie I saw this year. I don't really know what I can say without spoiling the first part of the movie, but aside from suffering from the same dragging-in-the-middle problem that plagued The Revenant, it was really good and disturbing and heartbreaking.

Creed: I remember seeing the trailer for this and got excited because it looked really good and then saw Sylvester Stallone and didn't want to because he's a fairly bad actor (IMO, porn star-level acting, which is pretty fitting for him) and didn't because of that. I eventually decided to watch it and it all worked out. Michael B. Jordan was great and Stallone was actually pretty good (give him the Oscar because he wasn't garbage!). The one person who told me he watched it might have overhyped it a tad, but I'm glad I saw it.

The Lady in the Van: The movie was probably about as good as Maggie Smith's character was supposed to smell.
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tfghost92
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swag on this dick, bitches
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I 100% agree with you on The Revenant. I was like 'this could be pretty great." but I was let down. Leo's performance wasn't amazing. In fact it was probably worse than a lot of his performances over the past couple years. but what he went through WHILE acting was the big impressive part, which I give him credit for. sadly don't think he'll be taking this one home this year.


that being said, the movie was good, the cinematography was fantastic, and I'd watch it again. It was no bad performance by any means. Just by his standards I was slightly let down
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Asfan
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Good
Not The Revenant for Best Picture (and Spotlight being the best of the movies with a shot at winning)
Brie Larson
Alicia Vikander
Mad Max
Person who won costume design for Mad Max wearing a bedazzled leather jacket
Jacob Tremblay was adorable
Sketches of movies where the white actors were replaced by black ones


Bad
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Sam Smith lmao
Mark R getting me excited for supporting actor and then finishing it with ylance

Whatevs
I slightly preferred Fassbender's performance to Leo's but idc that much
Wasn't all that big on Carol but its score was super good. That Hateful Eight guy was cute though, in the way that super old people are cute
Chris Rock had his ups and downs
Ali G?
It dragged a bit in the middle but that's pretty much par for the course
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