At 5/29/15 03:25 PM, TheMaster wrote:

At 5/29/15 10:30 AM, Dean wrote: The World At War (documentary series)

Cropping the blu-ray to 16:9 rather than releasing it in the original 4:3 is, appropriately, worse than Hitler.

Which is why it's taken me this long to get it, but it was cheap enough to justify it.

I neglected to mention that I recently saw one of the movie of the week picks I had missed before which @natick picked, das Experiment. Not bad. I also watched Lone Survivor. Why did they have to add shit that didn't happen? Wouldn't sticking to the true story all the way be interesting enough?

At 6/4/15 07:37 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: I neglected to mention that I recently saw one of the movie of the week picks I had missed before which @natick picked, das Experiment. Not bad. I also watched Lone Survivor. Why did they have to add shit that didn't happen? Wouldn't sticking to the true story all the way be interesting enough?

damn, that was almost a year ago. downfall is better, memes aside. and with lone survivor, you gotta shoehorn action in somewhere and get that armchair patriot dollar

i've got selma and i stand alone from the mail, gonna watch them both over the weekend

At 6/5/15 02:38 AM, Natick wrote:

At 6/4/15 07:37 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: I neglected to mention that I recently saw one of the movie of the week picks I had missed before which @natick picked, das Experiment. Not bad. I also watched Lone Survivor. Why did they have to add shit that didn't happen? Wouldn't sticking to the true story all the way be interesting enough?

damn, that was almost a year ago. downfall is better, memes aside.

I still haven't gotten around to seeing that. I haven't seen that many German movies as far as I remember. Run Lola Run, the Lives of Others, Metropolis and some of Herzog's stuff. Haven't even seen das Boot.

and with lone survivor, you gotta shoehorn action in somewhere and get that armchair patriot dollar

It was weird how they threw in this final battle that never happened. It already had a good deal of action before that. It seems kinda wrong. And I heard that they changed how the guys died, which seems disrespectful.

i've got selma and i stand alone from the mail, gonna watch them both over the weekend

I know I hated I Stand Alone when I saw it, but it was a long time ago and I can't remember the movie aside from there being porn in it.

The Look of Silence is out next week.

Turbohyped.

Watched Ex Machina.

Generally a pretty good film in my opinion, especially for a debut. I was on the edge my seat for most of it and Oscar Isaac gives a good performance as he really dominates every scene he is in. Also, the film is somewhat thought-provoking about the relations between men and (future) robots/machines which I think is what these type of sci-fi films should be.

*MILD SPOILER BELOW*

However, I agree with many others that the ending is unsatisfying and the plot is rather thin. I was waiting for a big twist or maybe a deeper exploration of certain concepts, but the film didn't deliver on that unfortunately.

I watched Prometheus. Does this movie totally make sense?At least after an extended cut and sequel? It was neat to look at, though. I had no expectations. Also that is the dumbest biologist I've ever seen. Hmm angry space cobra. Better pet it!

I watched Vengeance. Been quite a while since I watched a Johnnie To movie. Not bad.

IS THIS YOUR JACKET?

At 6/7/15 02:43 AM, ZeroDown wrote: Has anyone else ever seen Big?

It's pretty good.

I get to be on top!

At 6/7/15 02:43 AM, ZeroDown wrote: Has anyone else ever seen Big?

13 Going On 30 > Big

fight me irl

Kingsman: The Secret Service. It's supposed to be a spoof of the older James Bond films.

I did not like it much to be honest. For a comic/parody film I thought it was a bit too serious and dramatic. For an action film I thought it was way too goofy. It was unintentionally silly in some scenes, over-the-top violent in others and the characters were too stereotypical to take any of them seriously in my opinion.

At 6/7/15 06:44 PM, Auz wrote: Kingsman: The Secret Service. It's supposed to be a spoof of the older James Bond films.

I did not like it much to be honest. For a comic/parody film I thought it was a bit too serious and dramatic. For an action film I thought it was way too goofy. It was unintentionally silly in some scenes, over-the-top violent in others and the characters were too stereotypical to take any of them seriously in my opinion.

yea you summed up my opinion of that movie.
to be honest i could of done without seeing the movie, personally.

what are your thoughts on the Shawshank Redemption for those of you who have seen it?

I thought Kingsman was dank as shit, though not as great as it potentially could have been. Gazelle was way under used, the female agent (Lancelot?) was kind of just there, and some scenes like the opening in particular were really really shit, to the point where it felt like they had a different director. That church scene though. And Michael Caine.

Also if you have a few grand to spare you can buy one of those wicked hot suits worn in the film.

At 6/7/15 08:15 PM, HomicidalDragon wrote: what are your thoughts on the Shawshank Redemption for those of you who have seen it?

Kind of overrated but hella smash for what it is. The ending hit me right where I feel the first time I watched it. It's just so safe and vanilla for the amount of praise it gets though. If shawshank is your favourite film you're certifiably basic.

At 6/6/15 10:54 AM, Sense-Offender wrote: I watched Prometheus. Does this movie totally make sense?At least after an extended cut and sequel? It was neat to look at, though. I had no expectations. Also that is the dumbest biologist I've ever seen. Hmm angry space cobra. Better pet it!

In that movie's defence there's an earlier deleted scene in which they find a benign alien-worm-thing. RP space biologist.

I read the screenplay for Alien Engineers (what would eventually become Prometheus) and I think it's significantly better. Probably not worth bothering unless you're already a big Alien fan though. I like Prometheus more than most to begin with.

At 6/7/15 08:15 PM, HomicidalDragon wrote: what are your thoughts on the Shawshank Redemption for those of you who have seen it?

Good movie, but seeing Escape From Alcatraz, the similarities were kinda susrprising.

Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

@Auz
@Natick
@Dr-Worm
@Sense-Offender
@TheMaster
@Piggler
@SG3
@Vnzi
@Dean

At 6/7/15 09:12 PM, Jackho wrote:

At 6/6/15 10:54 AM, Sense-Offender wrote: I watched Prometheus. Does this movie totally make sense?At least after an extended cut and sequel? It was neat to look at, though. I had no expectations. Also that is the dumbest biologist I've ever seen. Hmm angry space cobra. Better pet it!

In that movie's defence there's an earlier deleted scene in which they find a benign alien-worm-thing. RP space biologist.

I hadn't heard about that one, but I heard a lot of stuff was cut and they might possibly release an extended version. I had read about a scene where they find a giant one. I spent a good deal of time trying to find videos of the deleted scenes but only managed to see the extended bit of the engineer talking, the engineer at the beginning being handed the black stuff by another one, Noomi hitting the engineer with an axe and an alternate version of mutated incompetent geologist killing people. Couldn't find anything else. I could have sworn I saw a clip or part of a trailer before the movie came out with Guy Pearce without old man makeup making a public speech in front of a building, but I've seen nothing of it and am mow questioning my brain.

I read the screenplay for Alien Engineers (what would eventually become Prometheus) and I think it's significantly better.

That's what I had always heard, that it was screwed up through rewrites and ended up completely different. I keep seeing people blaming the Lost writer.

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

I think I'd be down, just most likely not through July.

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

I'm definitely up for it. Maybe it'll actually get me posting again.

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

sure, i'm game

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

Whoa, I was actually just thinking of making a post like this. Sure, I'd be down. When would y'all want to start?

I'm thinking we start with If... since that's where we left off and then take it from there, but I'm open to whatever.

At 6/6/15 09:41 AM, Auz wrote: Watched Ex Machina.

Generally a pretty good film in my opinion, especially for a debut. I was on the edge my seat for most of it and Oscar Isaac gives a good performance as he really dominates every scene he is in. Also, the film is somewhat thought-provoking about the relations between men and (future) robots/machines which I think is what these type of sci-fi films should be.

Yeah I pretty much felt similarly about it. Intrigued but not blown away. Though the more I've thought about the movie the more it's revealed itself to be more clever than I had initially given it credit for. At first I was also kind of disappointed with how the film introduces all these heady sci-fi ideas but never fully explores them, but then the movie isn't really about "the relations between men and machines" half as much as it's about the relations between men and women, isn't it (or at least the film explores that angle much more thoroughly than it does the theoretical A.I. stuff). And in that context I was initially kind of put off by how the film plays into groanworthy sci-fi cliches of women as an unknowable alien species, until I started to see how the film subverts those tropes in some pretty interesting ways. Like for example...

*SPOILERS FOR EX MACHINA*

...in the final scenes of the film, when Ava is picking out and lovingly applying her new human skin while we occasionally cut back to Caleb anxiously waiting for her like the doofus he is. We're led to believe, like so many similar stories have told us, that Ava's transformation is for Caleb's benefit and by extension for the audience's titillation. Then she finally emerges from the other room and...immediately and brutally shuts all of that down. The skin scene isn't portrayed so intimately because it's the fruition of Caleb's fantasies, it's depicted that way because it's the climax of Ava's self-actualization as a human being. And fuck Caleb for thinking otherwise (and by extension fuck us for doing the same), the movie seems to say. So ultimately Caleb's "nice guy" shtick is revealed to be really just a more passive-aggressive version of Nathan's bro chauvinism, a message lots of male nerds have unfortunately failed to take to heart.

I still think Under the Skin recently tackled somewhat similar subject matter (both the opaque morality of aliens thing and the gender relations thing) in a far more complex, unique and engrossing way, but Ex Machina certainly has its charms. If nothing else it introduces Garland and Vikander as potentially formidable new talents and cements Oscar Isaac as a national goddamn treasure.

At 6/7/15 08:15 PM, HomicidalDragon wrote: what are your thoughts on the Shawshank Redemption for those of you who have seen it?

I once read a comment on some site calling The Shawshank Redemption "the most good movie ever made" and that pretty much encapsulates my feelings about the film. It does everything exactly right, it's very well made, and it's kind of staid and boring. It's better than most of its shallowly "inspiring," emotionally manipulative and self-important Oscar-bait brethren but it doesn't really do anything to transcend the conventions of that genre.

I do have a theory about Shawshank's seemingly inexplicable status as the Internet's Favorite Movie, though. The movie is notoriously on constant rotation in basic cable programming, and that started even before it became so widely beloved. As a result of that, for a certain generation of young men Shawshank was often the first "real," "grownup," "prestigious" movie they had ever really seen. That certain generation of young men also happened to make up the majority of IMDb's userbase just as that site was starting to become an institution, and those formative cable impressions drove Shawshank straight to the top of the site's Top 250 rankings. And obviously that status led more people to seek it out, and in turn for the fanbase for the movie to grow, and in turn for the cable airings to continue and increase, and in turn for the whole thing to start over again.

So basically a fluke spike in cable airings at a chance opportune moment in the history of the Internet flung The Shawshank Redemption into a self-perpetuating cycle of mass exposure and praise that's led the movie to stumble ass-backwards into Greatest of All Time status. It's a good movie and I'm not trying to shit on it, but come on.

Though I also have a hunch that this movie in particular strikes such a formative chord with boys because while most Oscar-y movies are about sweeping historical events or topical sociopolitical issues or complex psychology or romance, none of which are themes most kids can easily connect to or care about, Shawshank is all about male friendship persevering under and rebelling against a strict institutional authority, themes they can much more readily relate to.

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies?

I've got loads of shit on for work and have exams for my professional qualifications coming up, but I'll give it a go.

Going to Jurassic World tomorrow. Other then that I'm still waiting for Ted 2, Southpaw and Sinister 2.

Saw Jurassic World.

SPOILERS

It was a bit shit, but the T. Rex didn't die so I didn't have to detonate the explosives taped to my spine in the cinema.

At 6/9/15 05:44 AM, Dr-Worm wrote:

Yeah I pretty much felt similarly about it. Intrigued but not blown away. Though the more I've thought about the movie the more it's revealed itself to be more clever than I had initially given it credit for. At first I was also kind of disappointed with how the film introduces all these heady sci-fi ideas but never fully explores them, but then the movie isn't really about "the relations between men and machines" half as much as it's about the relations between men and women, isn't it (or at least the film explores that angle much more thoroughly than it does the theoretical A.I. stuff). And in that context I was initially kind of put off by how the film plays into groanworthy sci-fi cliches of women as an unknowable alien species, until I started to see how the film subverts those tropes in some pretty interesting ways. Like for example...

*SPOILERS FOR EX MACHINA*

...in the final scenes of the film, when Ava is picking out and lovingly applying her new human skin while we occasionally cut back to Caleb anxiously waiting for her like the doofus he is. We're led to believe, like so many similar stories have told us, that Ava's transformation is for Caleb's benefit and by extension for the audience's titillation. Then she finally emerges from the other room and...immediately and brutally shuts all of that down. The skin scene isn't portrayed so intimately because it's the fruition of Caleb's fantasies, it's depicted that way because it's the climax of Ava's self-actualization as a human being. And fuck Caleb for thinking otherwise (and by extension fuck us for doing the same), the movie seems to say. So ultimately Caleb's "nice guy" shtick is revealed to be really just a more passive-aggressive version of Nathan's bro chauvinism, a message lots of male nerds have unfortunately failed to take to heart.

I don't know maybe I am stupid but I didn't see any commentary on the relations between men and woman and if there was then wouldn't it be kind of misogynistic? Ava was an ice cold killer who killed the person that saved her. Are we supposed to believe that this is how women are supposed to act. As far people expecting Ava to be the 'fruition' of Calab's fantasies, I don't know about that either. I was able to predict the ending of the movie one hour into the film and really my beef with this movie isn't the ending but the way the movie was executed. Frankly, I just found this movie boring.
Again, If something flew over my head here then I would really appreciate if someone would explain it to me.

At 6/7/15 09:06 PM, Jackho wrote: I thought Kingsman was dank as shit, though not as great as it potentially could have been. Gazelle was way under used, the female agent (Lancelot?) was kind of just there

That was one thing that irked me as well. Even after she gets chosen as Lancelot, she's still no more than Eggsy's sidekick. Only good thing was that they kind of subverted the 'guy gets the girl' trope by letting Eggsy go after that Swedish princess in the end.

At 6/7/15 09:23 PM, Jackho wrote: Are any of you boys interested in resurrecting the NG Film of the Week, now that summer has it's fingers in all our pies

I'll be working on my thesis for most of the Summer probably, but I might be able to find some time in between all the labouring.

At 6/9/15 05:44 AM, Dr-Worm wrote:

At 6/6/15 09:41 AM, Auz wrote:

*SPOILERS FOR EX MACHINA*

...in the final scenes of the film, when Ava is picking out and lovingly applying her new human skin while we occasionally cut back to Caleb anxiously waiting for her like the doofus he is. We're led to believe, like so many similar stories have told us, that Ava's transformation is for Caleb's benefit and by extension for the audience's titillation. Then she finally emerges from the other room and...immediately and brutally shuts all of that down. The skin scene isn't portrayed so intimately because it's the fruition of Caleb's fantasies, it's depicted that way because it's the climax of Ava's self-actualization as a human being. And fuck Caleb for thinking otherwise (and by extension fuck us for doing the same), the movie seems to say. So ultimately Caleb's "nice guy" shtick is revealed to be really just a more passive-aggressive version of Nathan's bro chauvinism, a message lots of male nerds have unfortunately failed to take to heart.

I hadn't really looked at it that way, but it sounds plausible to me that that was the message the writers intended to convey. Caleb was quite clearly thinking about getting it on with Ava and most of the viewers were probably expecting as well. Especially after that scene were Nathan explained she had a working vagina. But yeah, why should they have sex? Cause he did her a favour? Perhaps that was the point in the end.

but Ex Machina certainly has its charms. If nothing else it introduces Garland and Vikander as potentially formidable new talents and cements Oscar Isaac as a national goddamn treasure.

Agreed. Like I said, it's a very promising debut by Garland.

More coherent, less spoilery thoughts on Jurassic World below.

It's not a Jurassic Park film. The series have always been adventure movies, this is straight up action. It isn't a change for the better. It's full of stock characters, with the prudish love interest who secretly loves the rugged, quipping action hero and the comic relief nerd battling against the amoral scientist and bullheaded military man. Coming from a series previously lead by a grumpy scientist and then Jeff Goldblum as Jeff Goldblum, this is a big step backwards.

The dialogue is pants, full of cliches and "clever" quips that certainly don't help to humanise the characters, and that's half of the problem. I don't give a fuck about any of these people, so the threat of them being eaten isn't exciting. This might have been fine if the action was at least fun to watch, but that brings me on to the other half of the problem.

The action is too fast, and there's too much of it. They've tried to cram too many set pieces into these two hours and it just ends up coming off as one long sequence of "stuff happening". Each individual scene is over almost as soon as it begins and the film rattles on to the next one, without giving anything time to build up any tension or any room to breathe afterwards.

We go from car chase to bike chase, from exploding helicopters (was Roger Corman involved in this film?) to dinosaurs attacking human hamster balls, with not a moment in between to sit back, take a breath and reflect on any of it. We're not talking Transformers levels of incoherent white noise here, the action itself is all very well done. You're always able to tell what it happening and it doesn't just fill the screen with as much CGI shit as it can, it just can't overcome the pacing issue.

SPOILERS START

There's also this weird focus on using dinosaurs as weapons and on the hybridisation of them, which feels very cartoonish and out of place in what is otherwise a, relatively speaking, pretty grounded film. The InGen army thing didn't sit right with me either from a purely fanboy perspective, too. InGen is a bioengineering company. They're not OCP. They wouldn't have a private army. In The Lost World the InGen guys are a bunch of fuck up mercenaries and hunters scraped together last minute to go capture some dinosaurs, they're not fucking Spetsnaz.

Can't say I'm a fan of what they did with the raptors, either. They don't even look right, and the bit where they turn face again and help Chris Pratt fight Indominus was dumb. The scene where they wipe out the InGen special forces was okay, but not quite as good as the attack in the long grass from the second film, which is a fantastic scene from a relatively poor picture.

T. Rex (which also didn't look quite right) getting all of 5 minutes of screen time was disappointing as well, but I have to admit as dumb as the scene when the last surviving raptor showed up was (shot like she was the second coming of Christ), her teaming up with Rexy was a bit special. Didn't even mind when they looked at each other afterwards and were like "we cool?" before going their separate ways.

It does that thing where it replicates shots from the old films too, which is rarely a good idea because you've got to be damn sure the reaction won't be "man, I wish I was watching that film" when you do. There's a shot of a dude being stepped on straight out of The Lost World, and they even do the heroes (two adults and two children) surrounded by raptors, and it's done shot for shot until the third raptor arrives to change it up.

SPOILERS END

It isn't all bad, it's just a little bit dull. Man of Steel suffered from the same pacing problem, and it certainly isn't as bad as that picture, but I'd struggle to recommend it on the whole.

lol Why does Miracles/Black Dragon with Jackie Chan have music from NeverEnding Story?

Watched Riddick.

Meh.

I somehow get the impression the next movie with this "underverse" story would need at least the budget of Chronicles to look alright, but I can't imagine it getting that. I'm assuming that's being made since that awkward video last year of Diesel dancing and lip synching. lol That was weird.

Also, I don't understand why that final scene of him catching Krone was cut. The end would have been more smooth with it in.

At 6/5/15 02:38 AM, Natick wrote:

At 6/4/15 07:37 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: I neglected to mention that I recently saw one of the movie of the week picks I had missed before which @natick picked, das Experiment.

damn, that was almost a year ago.

Turns out they made a movie directly based on the Stanford prison experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XN2X72jrFk

Hello, Cinema Club.

As an obsessive of cinema, I think it makes sense to try and join this club. Is it still as simple as just posting some of your favourite films and then you're in? If so, I'd like to join - a few of my favourites are:

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru
Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse (enjoyed it so much I used a still as my signature)
The Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski
Terry Gilliam's Brazil
Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher
Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped

If anyone is interested, I have my complete film collection detailed on my RateYourMusic account too: click, click. I'm not sure what else there is I need to do to join so I hope this is a good start.

Saw The Look of Silence.

Aside from the shitty cinema I saw it in (fucking dinosaur roars coming through the wall for 70% of it, I miss living in Newcastle so much I wish I could marry the Tyneside Cinema), I was not disappointed.

It does feel like very much a companion piece, and while Oppenheimer said he feels people can view the films in any order I'm not sure how it would have played to me had I not already seen The Act of Killing. It's a far more conventional film than The Act of Killing, but that's not a knock on it. Stripping back the lunacy of the previous picture and taking a laser focus onto Adi and his family makes it far more personal, and it's more emotionally involving for it.

Oppenheimer still has an eye for the visual even when dealing with the comparatively mundane goings on (if men talking jovially about drinking the blood of their victims to the face of their relatives can ever be called mundane), but I was surprised to learn that perhaps the most powerful sequence in the film, in which Adi's father's dementia leaves him lost and afraid in his own home, unable to recognise family and fearing he is about to be beaten up for trespassing, was shot by Adi himself.

At this point Oppenheimer can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. Two masterworks in a row.