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Last movie watched...

Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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Tiplodocus

The Reef
I've been partial to a shark movie ever since the summer of '75 when a copy of JAWS did the rounds at our school with all the dirty parts earmarked.

I mean, if I was ever eaten by a shark, you could genuinely say "It's what he would have wanted!"

I'm trying to think of a creature that has had more movies made about it which also fit in different sub genres (survival, horror, action, monster movie, adventure). Very versatile as 100 million years of evolution does for you.

I'd started watching THE MEG  when I was on holiday but only got forty minutes in before giving up.

But this, presumably low budget, Aussie film does the job. It favours suspense and tension over shocks and gore but keeps you on the edge of the seat for it's short 85 minute running time.

The shark is cleverly realised by pasting real shark footage into the same frame as the victims.

If I had to complain, they don't really give you enough character to care too much about; sure you sympathise with their plight but you aren't exactly rooting for them... more hoping for them. And they are just victims, this is a survival movie so doesn't have the cod heroics of, say The Shallows.

And if the dilemma the characters find themselves in is a metaphor for relationships, then the writer/director must have been dealt a shitty hand.

But overall, I liked it.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

JamesC

Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 01 October, 2019, 06:59:42 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 11:24:17 AM
Rambo: Last Blood

You could write the plot on the back of a postage stamp and at times it feels like a straight to video Steven Segal film or something.
An hour and a half flew by though, and if all you're after is to see Rambo fucking up some baddies it's good fun.
Not as good as the last Rambo but better than III and probably better than II.

Vile film. All Mexicans are rapists, traffickers and generally nasty people.

Build the wall!

Horrible film and a stain on the name of 'First Blood' which was the exact opposite.

I don't want to get into an argument about the moral standing of a Rambo film but I think this is a bit unfair. The aunt, daughter and journalist are all major characters and aren't depicted as nasty people. Other than that, it's pretty explicit that we're dealing with a gang of criminals rather than average Mexicans going about their business. It's like saying John Wick makes all Russians look like killers.

JamesC

Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 07:27:51 PM
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 01 October, 2019, 06:59:42 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 11:24:17 AM
Rambo: Last Blood

You could write the plot on the back of a postage stamp and at times it feels like a straight to video Steven Segal film or something.
An hour and a half flew by though, and if all you're after is to see Rambo fucking up some baddies it's good fun.
Not as good as the last Rambo but better than III and probably better than II.

Vile film. All Mexicans are rapists, traffickers and generally nasty people.

Build the wall!

Horrible film and a stain on the name of 'First Blood' which was the exact opposite.

I don't want to get into an argument about the moral standing of a Rambo film but I think this is a bit unfair. The aunt, daughter and journalist are all major characters and aren't depicted as nasty people. Other than that, it's pretty explicit that we're dealing with a gang of criminals rather than average Mexicans going about their business. It's like saying John Wick makes all Russians look like killers.

Thinking about it some more, I've changed my mind.
I've realised there's not actually any reason for the baddies to be Mexican at all. All the bits where they go over the boarder, they could have just been going to the nearest city. The gang members could have been anybody.

Professor Bear

No reason for the villains in the 2008 movie to be Asians, either.  I find it charming that the most fondly-remembered antagonists in the series are cops and the US government's treatment of veterans.

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 08:00:28 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 07:27:51 PM
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 01 October, 2019, 06:59:42 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 11:24:17 AM
Rambo: Last Blood

You could write the plot on the back of a postage stamp and at times it feels like a straight to video Steven Segal film or something.
An hour and a half flew by though, and if all you're after is to see Rambo fucking up some baddies it's good fun.
Not as good as the last Rambo but better than III and probably better than II.

Vile film. All Mexicans are rapists, traffickers and generally nasty people.

Build the wall!

Horrible film and a stain on the name of 'First Blood' which was the exact opposite.

I don't want to get into an argument about the moral standing of a Rambo film but I think this is a bit unfair. The aunt, daughter and journalist are all major characters and aren't depicted as nasty people. Other than that, it's pretty explicit that we're dealing with a gang of criminals rather than average Mexicans going about their business. It's like saying John Wick makes all Russians look like killers.

Thinking about it some more, I've changed my mind.
I've realised there's not actually any reason for the baddies to be Mexican at all. All the bits where they go over the boarder, they could have just been going to the nearest city. The gang members could have been anybody.

For me at least it seemed the filmmakers were going out of their way to portray the Mexicans as nasty, vile people.

shaolin_monkey

Given that the US's biggest problem with criminals and terrorism is via their own charming white supremacists, surely a more daring and accurate Rambo film should have been set on their own soil?

But you know, Hollywood - there's a lot of money in demonising the 'other'.

Mattofthespurs

Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 08:00:28 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 07:27:51 PM
Quote from: Mattofthespurs on 01 October, 2019, 06:59:42 PM
Quote from: JamesC on 01 October, 2019, 11:24:17 AM
Rambo: Last Blood

You could write the plot on the back of a postage stamp and at times it feels like a straight to video Steven Segal film or something.
An hour and a half flew by though, and if all you're after is to see Rambo fucking up some baddies it's good fun.
Not as good as the last Rambo but better than III and probably better than II.

Vile film. All Mexicans are rapists, traffickers and generally nasty people.

Build the wall!

Horrible film and a stain on the name of 'First Blood' which was the exact opposite.

I don't want to get into an argument about the moral standing of a Rambo film but I think this is a bit unfair. The aunt, daughter and journalist are all major characters and aren't depicted as nasty people. Other than that, it's pretty explicit that we're dealing with a gang of criminals rather than average Mexicans going about their business. It's like saying John Wick makes all Russians look like killers.

Thinking about it some more, I've changed my mind.


Not something you hear very often and I applaud you for it.

JamesC


TordelBack

#13508
Terminator: Salvation.  The Boy is working his way through the Terminator flicks, and last night we reached this one, which I don't think I'd ever seen all of. It's different enough from the rest to be mildly interesting. Sam Worthington's Marcus character is an enjoyable addition to the story, poor Anton Yelchin's Kyle Reese isn't too bad, but for my money Bale's John Connor is awful - very hard to connect this person with any of the previous versions. And the less said about Bryce Dallas Howard's somnolent Kate the better: ouch. And then somewhere below even that level of shit casting there's Michael Ironside as the leader of the global resistance, presumably only because Lance Henrikson had already been killed in the first one.

I quite liked some of designs for the various silly robot things, and the Arnie CGI is actually surprisingly solid, and not over-used - however my wife was disappointed he didn't appear to have a digi-wang, which I can understand. 

Ultimately though the movie falls flat for me because Skynet is so utterly shit - and not just because it's personified by a lost-looking HBC (although partly that).  Nowhere looks like its actually been nuked during Judgment Day (although there are little fires burning everywhere, no idea how or why), just sort of depopulated - most scenes look largely the same as the desert sequences in T2 and T3. Far from the hard-pressed urban guerillas minutes from extinction that we've been shown before, this time the Resistance is more like Operation Desert Storm, camped out in the open desert with hangars full of tank-busting fighters and (for some reason) a full suite of heart transplant equipment.

The super-intelligent global defence network with an army of unstoppable killing machines seems unable to do anything whatsoever about this, except hang around in a(nother) giant factory waiting to be attacked (despite T3 establishing that Skynet was a distributed system and there was no 'base' or 'core' to destroy - which turns out to be the case at the very end, despite everyone carrying on as if this was going to sort it all out). Skynet is so bloody thick that despite somehow knowing that Kyle Reese is a critical piece in the equation, it sticks him in a cell rather than killing him immediately, and thereby winning the war. John Connors' sole role in all this appears to be ensuring that John Connor continues to exist: that Marcus' story is by far the more interesting of the two strands is a big problem.

But look, it is a bit of a departure from the previous two (essentially remakes of the first one), and there's some good effects and action sequences. And when we watch Terminator: Genisys, this one is going to look like a bloody masterpiece.

Professor Bear

McG really only makes dumb romps and Salvation was slightly hamstrung by its generally serious tone, but I liked it as a post-nuclear knockabout in the vein of 1980s straight-to-video trash like America 3000 or Steel Frontier.

Speaking of low expectations, most Youtube short movies I watch usually don't amount to much and are just a director's demo reel that for some reason they've advertised as a proper film, but there are the odd exceptions and Where Blood Lies is one of those, coming complete with a beginning, middle and end - admittedly a low bar, but it's also not one that a lot of short movies tend to reach.  It's worth a look, though as it has Nazis and vampires in it and will only take 10 minutes of your time.

Tiplodocus

I'm always amazed at the number of widely regarded fan movies on YouTube that are just fights. So I'll give that one a look.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Professor Bear

It would be nice if more creators concentrated on setup and payoff rather than just the flashy bangs, but I don't imagine it's easy to get all the parts in place to make a movie from the volunteer work of people on different continents, so I don't really blame creators for concentrating on the one stretch of the story that might get them work if the right person sees it.

Sci-fi writer Marc Scott Zicree has been trying to make a movie like this, but it's taken him the better part of a decade and only in the last few years when he turned to crowdfunding did it actually start to come together.  The first hour is up on Youtube, and is worth watching for the back projection on the car driving sequence, about which we will say only nice things because everyone did their best.  I guess it's also worth a gander to play spot-the-sci-fi-convention regulars - Robert Picardo is clearly not done playing space doctor just yet.

Apestrife

Thief by Michael Mann. This one took me a bit by surprise. Starts out as near procedure on how to get a safe open only to focus on the main character Frank, a theif. Has a genuinely moving scene in which he confesses a thing or two about himself... I'll just leave it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBYhb49Hfw8

I was very fascinated where the story ended up. The pain he dealt with, the consequences of those coping mechanisms. Couldn't stop thinking about it for a week.

Only thing I wish was better was some of the editing. Felt a bit hasty at times. But in a way it fit the film due to the nature of James Caan's portrayal of Frank.

An easy film to recommend. I think especially if someone likes HEAT or DRIVE.

radiator


Hustlers

Lightweight but solidly entertaining 'true life' crime drama about down on their luck strippers ripping off bankers in post credit crunch Manhattan. I can imagine someone watching this on Netflix and being underwhelmed, as its really a fluffy, loud and brash popcorn kind of a film purely designed to be seen with an audience.

While I would have liked the script to delve a little deeper into its characters (it's fairly light on character development and its supporting characters are really little more than loose sketches) I'd say it succeeds at what it sets out to do and I had a good time with it. The two lead actors (including a standout performance by - I can't quite believe I'm typing this - Jennifer Lopez) are very strong and elevate the material even when the script is a bit wobbly and on the nose.

Tiplodocus

Mrs Tips was out on a hen so me and Student Tips snuck in KONG: SKULL ISLAND.

Still better than it has any right to be and the monster action is short but very sweet. Two hours flies by.


I think the fact it isn't a Kong/Ann Darrow "beauty and the beast" means they have to find a new theme. And what do warriors do when war hasn't worked out for them and is ending fits the bill nicely. I still wish Toby Kebble mad it to the end intact though. I was really rooting for him.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!