More Movies You've Watched This Week

Cephalic_Carnage · June 30, 2009, 2:23pm

Watched Transformers 2 yesterday evening.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that they tried to combine 200 different movie genres (and movies) into one 2.5 hour flick… Real identity crisis there.

Wish they’d cut the amount of characters in half and used the freed-up screen time to actually allow for some interesting interaction and char development. Ditch the parents (really, wtf) etc and really concentrate on the characters that matter…

The humor (mostly) sucked. Now, you had the twins, and while I thought that they were just plain goofy, at least there was some potential there. Wasted potential.
I don’t think I smiled even once throughout the whole movie, well, except for that dumb, zombie-seeking-brains-grin that stole onto my face whenever Megan Fox appeared.

Now, Megan is real easy on the eyes and all, but for someone who got so much screen-time, she sure didn’t do all that much. (btw, someone in the transformers 2 thread complained about how her white pants don’t get dirty in the desert and while under fire and all that… They did get dirty. Man, you must have looked away from Megan for a while to watch Shia lie on the ground, hopefully - but not really - dead. No shame in admitting that. We all wanted him to die painfully.)

Oh well.

To get back to the identity chrisis thing… Not only did they try to merge comedy, action, sci-fi, teeny-whatever and disney… They also seemed to want to show gruesome deaths of lots of human soldiers and several hotties walking around with very suggestive expressions (anyone else think that Megan Fox should really be doing porn, not regular movies? It’s not like her acting skills are great, she’d fit right in) while still keeping it all pg-13 or whatever.

So we have lots of soldiers dying, being cut in half (although maybe the German version is edited… Didn’t see any real blood or bodyparts, just a lot of implied stuff) and whatnot, but at the same time, Megan fox doesn’t even do a topless scene.

What the fuck is wrong with Labouf anyway? Shouldn’t he be humping her, like, a lot?
No wonder Megan almost chose the little decepticon humping her leg over Shia. I can totally understand her reasoning there…

The Army was a little on the funny side, too.
So we send Infantry against huge, heavily armored robots. Main infantry weapon: Assault rifles.
Ok. Would be my first choice too, right.

I guess the movie would have been a short one if the human soldiers each packed a Javelin launcher and had more tank-support (as the 120 mil cannons apparently worked pretty well against the mid-sized decepticons at the end). Oh well.
Apparently, the writers/director wanted to make up for all the idiocy by giving the human military a ship with a Gauss cannon (or MAC cannon or rail-gun or whatever you want to call it).
That thing kicked ass.
I wanted to see more gauss kills, though I understand why transformers fans are pissed at how easily the weapon destroyed it’s only target… One would think that one could have taken a few hits at least.

Movie seemed quite rushed as well in many sections…

Anyone know what happened to the three bike autobots? I think 2 of them were hit towards the end, but I don’t know if they survived or not. They should have played the twin’s role instead of the twins.
I might be biased though, the moto-autobots reminded me a bit of the mototerminators from t: salvation.
And those sounded and looked fucking great. (I want one! Even better if it’s female…)

Well, my reviews always sound very negative, but I still enjoyed the movie.
Wish I could have skipped the dialogue most of the time, though, but oh well.

Was an eye-candy-only movie, and it did that part mostly right (Do strippers stay fully clothed during a strip-tease? No. So why did Megan?).

Cool as usual to see a lot of the good old transformers come to life on the big screen… Though I hope that the third movie is going to do a lot of things differently.

AngryVader · June 30, 2009, 2:41pm

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Watched Transformers 2 yesterday evening.

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that they tried to combine 200 different movie genres (and movies) into one 2.5 hour flick… Real identity crisis there.

Wish they’d cut the amount of characters in half and used the freed-up screen time to actually allow for some interesting interaction and char development. Ditch the parents (really, wtf) etc and really concentrate on the characters that matter… [/quote]

It’s funny you mention this because once of the concerns about this movie was that it was being filmed at the time of the writers strike. There was an article I read recently that pointed out that one of the reasons why some of our Geek movies this Summer have been so disappointing was that the stories/scripts were still being worked on during the time of the writers strike. Wolverine, Terminator: Salvation and Transformers 2 were all having rewrites and script work done during the strike, so you can see that weakness on screen.

Star Trek, on the other hand, was written and mostly done well before the writers strike happened, so that’s one of the reason why it was so much better. Well and that JJ Abrams is a better director apparently.

The article went on to say that we’ve almost gotten through all of the movies that were worked on during the strike, so the quality should be a bit better going forward.

[quote]Anyone know what happened to the three bike autobots? I think 2 of them were hit towards the end, but I don’t know if they survived or not. They should have played the twin’s role instead of the twins.
I might be biased though, the moto-autobots reminded me a bit of the mototerminators from t: salvation.
And those sounded and looked fucking great. (I want one! Even better if it’s female…)
[/quote]

From what I read, the two that got hit were supposed to have ‘died’, but we’ll see if that’s really true since that’s really not confirmed on screen. My disappointment with Arcee and the Twins was that they were both supposed to be combiners. It would have been nice to see them combine during the final battle. Oh well…

The rumor is that Bay won’t do the third film, so as long as they don’t let someone like McG or Brett Ratner do it, the third one might actually have a little more substance to it, as far as story and humor anyway.

Don’t get me wrong though, I still thought it was entertaining. It was just lacking a bit for me.

catalyst · June 30, 2009, 2:54pm

[quote]Vicomte wrote:

I watched Gattaca this morning. Great film and touches on some ideas I’ve had in my head lately.[/quote]

One of my all time favorite movies - watched it again 2 nights ago.

Others:

Incredible Hulk - much better than 2003’s Hulk, always a fan of Edward Norton.

Bride Wars - fell asleep after 1 hour. I can normally tolerate romantic comedies, but this was so far skewed to females that I just couldn’t get into it.

Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker - Kids and I loved it. I haven’t watched a lot of these, so I was surprised to see Mark Hammil as the voice of the Joker. Not sure I like the idea of someone who is not a Wayne playing Batman though.

Gran Torino - Absolutely loved this one. I live in central Wisconsin, and there is a large Hmong population here. The movie did a very good job of casting real Hmongs, even if their acting was bad.

jtrinsey · June 30, 2009, 3:46pm

[quote]sen say wrote:
smh23 wrote:

Awesome fucking movie either way though.

Agreed.

I saw Remember the Titans again last night. I cry from about 20 minutes into the movie until the end. The only part that fucks it up is when the fat guy tells Coach Boon he’s eligible for college…just too cheesy even if it happened like that in real life…having been lucky (not necessarily talented) enough to play on a state champion football team my senior year in HS makes the movie hit home real hard…there…I made this post all about me !![/quote]

I still like that movie; I just wish I had never found out about the “real story” and how much is basically made up for the sake of the movie. Still a good movie and I’ll watch it most times it’s on, don’t get me wrong… but I was a little sad to see how little of a “true story” it actually told.

LarryDavid · June 30, 2009, 5:18pm

Tyson- With MJ’s death, and his (deserved) biographical revisionism still fresh on the mind, I figured it would be a good time to watch this documentary on Mike Tyson, which I’d been meaning to watch for a few weeks.

I must preface this by saying I was born in 1990, so as with Michael Jackson, I was around only for his descent into the public figure he became this decade. I’ll never fully grasp the influence wielded by these two in the better parts of their careers, since my experience with it was second hand at best.

As I finished watching Tyson the first thought that came to mind was how great it would’ve been had the other Mike got this kind of film made for him.

The entire film consists of Mike Tyson’s reflections on his life, mixed with archive footage of fights, past interviews, old news coverage, and home video. Mike is the only one who speaks, describing his life and his personality. And it’s a true testament to Tyson’s frankness that this film comes off as being more objective than it would’ve been had there been the typical commentary from associates, analysts and the like.

Mike never lets you get the impression that he’s a good man. When he admits to cheating on his wives with no explanation or even a discernible apology, you realize the tragedy in his life is not that he was a good person that was taken advantage of, but that he was a man that took more abuse than he handed out. At times Tyson is allowed to go off on various aspects of his persona, and can be disturbing, or just incomprehensible. However Mike’s candid nature makes for a much more genuine portrait.

I thought it was a great film.

xylitol · June 30, 2009, 6:18pm

Dent going crazy does make sense. Think about it this way:

-he sacrifices himself for the good of the city by pretending to be batman. In return he gets no reward, and the plan doesn’t work.
-the love of his life is killed, he hears her final moments before death
-half his face is blown off
-just before all this he’s subject to an intense pressure cooker as he has to deal with joker’s madness in his city.
-all this happens in a short period of time, which ups the intensity

-and on top of all this, his obsession with the coin right from the start of the movie suggests an underlying predilection for mental health issues.

Just_Jamie · June 30, 2009, 6:28pm

[quote]AdamC wrote:
InTranceWeTrust wrote:
anonym wrote:
Can someone explain to me why everybody loves The Wrestler?

Its about somebody overcoming adversity its just better then your run of the mill one cause of good acting and writing

it was ok. nothing special.

Chinatown - been meaning to watch it for a while. i enjoyed it. i liked the style.

Drag me to Hell - real good fun.

The Kite Runner - not bad at all.[/quote]

How was Drag Me to Hell?

Rape_Weight · June 30, 2009, 7:22pm

[quote]LarryDavid wrote:
Tyson- With MJ’s death, and his (deserved) biographical revisionism still fresh on the mind, I figured it would be a good time to watch this documentary on Mike Tyson, which I’d been meaning to watch for a few weeks.

I must preface this by saying I was born in 1990, so as with Michael Jackson, I was around only for his descent into the public figure he became this decade. I’ll never fully grasp the influence wielded by these two in the better parts of their careers, since my experience with it was second hand at best.

As I finished watching Tyson the first thought that came to mind was how great it would’ve been had the other Mike got this kind of film made for him.

The entire film consists of Mike Tyson’s reflections on his life, mixed with archive footage of fights, past interviews, old news coverage, and home video. Mike is the only one who speaks, describing his life and his personality. And it’s a true testament to Tyson’s frankness that this film comes off as being more objective than it would’ve been had there been the typical commentary from associates, analysts and the like.

Mike never lets you get the impression that he’s a good man. When he admits to cheating on his wives with no explanation or even a discernible apology, you realize the tragedy in his life is not that he was a good person that was taken advantage of, but that he was a man that took more abuse than he handed out. At times Tyson is allowed to go off on various aspects of his persona, and can be disturbing, or just incomprehensible. However Mike’s candid nature makes for a much more genuine portrait.

I thought it was a great film. [/quote]

I’ve been dying to see this!!

Mike Tyson is awesome, do they use some of the more… hilarious archived interviews?

“I’ll fuck you til you love me, faggot.”

Mike Tyson

Last night I watched Scarface, 9.5/10. Pacino is becoming one of my favorite actors.

LarryDavid · June 30, 2009, 9:36pm

[quote]Rape Weight wrote:
I’ve been dying to see this!!

Mike Tyson is awesome, do they use some of the more… hilarious archived interviews?

“I’ll fuck you til you love me, faggot.”

Mike Tyson

[/quote]

Yes the use some of the good old interview, and the do have the quote you mentioned :D. He’s got some good original quotes too.

But yeah, overall it’s a good serious movie.

Wimsey · June 30, 2009, 10:13pm

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I watched Leaving Las Vegas again the other night.

I mean it came on, and it, IMO, is Cage’s best performance. Plus Liz is a total smoke show and the movie is well done.

I remember being 17 or 18 the first time I saw it, and obviously not getting it. I remember being all like “He’s the man, that is the right way to go. Blah blah blah. God damn the hooker is hot.”

Now, it’s just depressing, and prevents me from bringing a single drink to my lips for like 3 weeks. I have pity for both characters for the entire film now. There isn’t one single moment in that film that is sexy to me.

Honestly, it is an amazing film IMO, depressing as hell, but amazing just the same.

(Sorry if this was brought up two pages ago. I didn’t read the thread.)[/quote]

I forgot how much I liked that movie. It is depressing as hell, but remarkable, thought provoking, memorable. You can only say that about a few movies. I loved the scene of him with the shopping cart going through the liquor store. I didn’t know what a real alcoholic was until I saw that movie. I wish that they would have explored his past a little more. We just see him burning old photos and a hooker stealing his wedding ring. I guess I wanted to know what drove him to this point. But you are right, that movie showed that Nick Cage can really act.

anonym · June 30, 2009, 10:54pm

[quote]Wimsey wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
I watched Leaving Las Vegas again the other night.

I mean it came on, and it, IMO, is Cage’s best performance. Plus Liz is a total smoke show and the movie is well done.

I remember being 17 or 18 the first time I saw it, and obviously not getting it. I remember being all like “He’s the man, that is the right way to go. Blah blah blah. God damn the hooker is hot.”

Now, it’s just depressing, and prevents me from bringing a single drink to my lips for like 3 weeks. I have pity for both characters for the entire film now. There isn’t one single moment in that film that is sexy to me.

Honestly, it is an amazing film IMO, depressing as hell, but amazing just the same.

(Sorry if this was brought up two pages ago. I didn’t read the thread.)

I forgot how much I liked that movie. It is depressing as hell, but remarkable, thought provoking, memorable. You can only say that about a few movies. I loved the scene of him with the shopping cart going through the liquor store. I didn’t know what a real alcoholic was until I saw that movie. I wish that they would have explored his past a little more. We just see him burning old photos and a hooker stealing his wedding ring. I guess I wanted to know what drove him to this point. But you are right, that movie showed that Nick Cage can really act.[/quote]

You two have convinced me to watch this later tonight.

Some people love hating on Cage, but he’s been in some legit good movies (8mm) and some badass ones (The Rock, Con Air, Face/Off, Firebirds). I’ll admit it - I even like The Family Man.

Definitely a good actor in my book.

MaximusB · July 1, 2009, 4:42am

[quote]AngryVader wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Watched Transformers 2 yesterday evening.