Last movie watched...

[radiator]

The cgi never really looked 'real' to me, but the performance and direction was competent and considered enough to ensure that I was emotionally invested very early on.

Actors and producers always like to bleat on in interviews about how great the characters and relationships are in the latest cgi/exploding city blockbuster are, but it's almost always a load of guff and the truth is that the script is hackneyed nonsense that takes a distant back seat to spectacle. I found it to be true in this case, though - it's quite something to see cutting-edge special effects used purely to service character and story, reminds me a little of the better Spielberg/Amblin films. Props to Andy Serkis - the last time I was this bowled over by the story potential of visual effects was with Gollum in LotR.

Though the running time was spot-on - did everything it needed to and didn't outstay it's welcome by one minute.

If I had to nitpick I'd say the science-y stuff was a little silly and contrived at times (though I appreciated the sensitivity/restraint in the handling of John Lithgow's character - not mentioning 'the disease' by name etc).

The [spoiler]virus[/spoiler] plotline seemed a bit shoe-horned in. I also wasn't keen on the story element of James Franco's character essentially being [spoiler]responsible for the downfall of mankind - it made it harder to sympathise with him during his farewell to Cesar at the end. To me the narrative thrust of the film was his relationship with Cesar, not 'idealistic scientist plays God and unwittingly unleashes disaster'. I'd would have found it narratively more satisfying if it were Jacobs that was directly responsible.[/spoiler]

The introduction of the 'evil' ape also seemed like something that was set up but never really payed off - towards the ending I predicted confidently that [spoiler]Cesar would continue to show mercy to humans until his leadership was challenged by the evil ape who would then kill him and Franco and take over as leader.[/spoiler]

I also wasn't at all keen on the blatant references to the franchise - that line, the stuff about the space shuttle launch - it was all a bit on the nose in what was otherwise a very subtle, thoughtful film. Took me out of the film a bit each time.

But yeah, overall a good solid slice of sci-fi and easily one of the better blockbusters of the decade so far. My girlfriend really liked it to, though found watching it a bit traumatic!

[Professor Bear]

I would argue that Star Trek Into Darkness' "KAHHN!" has set the bar for dumb and obtrusive callbacks as low as it will ever get, but I thought the use of "that line" was one of the only clever things Rise did, as it wrong-footed knowledgeable fans in order to make a direct callback to a much-unloved installment of the franchise - but if you weren't that big an Apes fan, it was just a reference to something from popular culture.

[Theblazeuk]

Can you refresh my memory on what that line was? I vaguely recall the classic [spoiler]"Paws off me"[/spoiler] being said by Draco but that's not a "much-unloved installment"

[JamesC]

The last film I watched was Vampire Dog. It's some kids' film that was on Amazon instant.

I was disappointed by the lack of vampiric characteristics that the dog displayed. He was apparently allergic to sunlight but the director kept forgetting about this and the dog kept going out in the day time. Worst of all the dog didn't drink blood but ate red jelly instead.

There was a plot about a kid getting bullied at school but it wasn't very interesting and I kept thinking that it was a missed opportunity that he didn't get his dog to bite their throats. I was hoping for an ending like 'Let the Right One In'.

[I, Cosh]

Despite usually being in the Tips camp of all films being at least twenty minutes too long, I wouldn't have noticed or minded if Boyhood had added another hour onto its already hefty running time. This "where does the time go" experience is a pretty neat analogy for the film itself which follows a young lad from the age of 5 to 18, like a fictional equivalent of the 7 Up series. Nothing much really happens and there's no plot, just a very generous view of the whole process of life and the experience of living it. It starts with what are basically the sense impressions and preoccupations of a child with scenes chosen to evoke the seemingly random way we preserve certain memories from childhood at the expense of others. We then move forward gradually until the later High School parts deliberately recall Linklater's earlier film, Dazed & Confused.

I certainly don't think verisimilitude is the only, or even the best, way to tell a story and a clever formal experiment is just as likely to be lifeless and dull as any Transformers sequel. However, it's hard to separate the process of making the film over 12 years from the final result and, here at least, everything just works together perfectly. Seeing these kids growing up, growing into someone is genuinely affecting. Probably even more so, for me anyway, is seeing their parents - Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke - change in the gradual way people do: almost imperceptibly from one year to the next, but hard to reconcile when viewed from either end.

Scenes and time periods flow into each other, mostly without any overt signposting, so a new haircut or the arrangement of chairs at the dinner table becomes of significance. There are moments of genuine drama, and the occasional bit of heavy-handed signposting in lieu of same, but it tends to zero in on the small moments which we remember: first day in a new school, talking to a girl, a father's forgotten promise. It's called Boyhood but [trite observation presumably featuring in every review alert] is just as much about sisters, mothers and fathers and can't help but evoke memories of our own childhood. There are passages of the director's trademark philosophical meanderings, first from the feckless dad and later, and more understandably, from the adolescent Mason but these are undercut with humour and a lot more naturalistic dialogue.

What ultimately emerges is a wonderfully warm picture of normal people trying to cope with and make sense of life. One that doesn't attempt to gloss over the dark side of life but which still wants to believe that people are at least trying, even if they really have no idea what the fuck they're doing.

TL;DR. Wow! Another marvellous ending.

[Professor Bear]

The last film I watched was Vampire Dog. It's some kids' film that was on Amazon instant.

It sounds like it's no Sherlock Bones, so you should give Zoltan: Hound of Dracula a whirl, as it covers the kind of ground you lament as missing from Vampire Dog, and is worth watching for one of the worst dog actors I've ever seen.  You wouldn't think you'd be able to tell that kind of thing as all a dog has to do in a film is just stand there and be a dog, but the pooch who plays Zoltan clearly keeps looking off to one side to take direction from someone off-camera during close-ups, which ruined the otherwise impeccable illusion the film-makers had created.

Need For Speed is one of the most perfectly-titled films you'll ever come across, as it spends forty minutes getting to the point that is explained in fifteen seconds in the trailer.  I have no idea how someone makes a film based entirely upon riding the coat-tails of another over-the-top franchise and yet manages to make something without a single moment of joy or playfulness for the entirety of its one hundred and forty minutes of running time. For someone who's sat through the Fast and the Furious films and been right there alongside the makers since the moment early in the very first film when they cottoned on that po-faced car-porn is for cunts alone, this really was a very disappointing experience.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Need For Speed ...without a single moment of joy or playfulness for the entirety of its one hundred and forty minutes of running time.

Well there was that slightly drawn out bit where yer fella walks through the office naked because of reasons.

I liked the way they took most of the running time to develop the characters and explain their motivations even though you had their entire role in the movie pegged within 5 seconds of them appearing on the screen.

[Professor Bear]

Well there was that slightly drawn out bit where yer fella walks through the office naked because of reasons.

Oh, you mean the bit where he grabbed that woman in the office and sexually harassed her while wearing no clothes, and then ran around chasing another man because the other man believed that he was a bummer and thus wanted to rape him, as all car-porn lovers secretly believe of any man who doesn't possess at least three pairs of denim jeans.  That sort of reminded me of a similar scene in 13 Going On 30 where a 13 year old girl who looks like an adult wakes up in a bed with a naked man and no memory of how she got there and then is chased around the room by him as he tells her he's going to fuck her whether she likes it or not - sometimes there is just a delicate balance between comedy and uncomfortable social horror that is not adequately straddled by those involved.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Well there was that slightly drawn out bit where yer fella walks through the office naked because of reasons.

Oh, you mean the bit where he grabbed that woman in the office and sexually harassed her while wearing no clothes, and then ran around chasing another man because the other man believed that he was a bummer and thus wanted to rape him...

Hmmm. Must've missed those bits while face-palming/eye-rolling

[JamesC]

The last film I watched was Vampire Dog. It's some kids' film that was on Amazon instant.

It sounds like it's no Sherlock Bones, so you should give Zoltan: Hound of Dracula a whirl, as it covers the kind of ground you lament as missing from Vampire Dog, and is worth watching for one of the worst dog actors I've ever seen.  You wouldn't think you'd be able to tell that kind of thing as all a dog has to do in a film is just stand there and be a dog, but the pooch who plays Zoltan clearly keeps looking off to one side to take direction from someone off-camera during close-ups, which ruined the otherwise impeccable illusion the film-makers had created.

I'll keep an eye out for Zoltan - sounds right up my street. It's the kind of thing I'd like to watch after going to the pub on a Friday.

[Goaty]

Well as I mention before, I pick random films a week on Netflix USA.

Sadly this was Nazis at the Center of the Earth what a shittest film!
crappest acting, crappest CGI, crappest plot, and that monster! Eh??? Well it work well in original Wolfenstein game! What the hell they think of when did thsi film then I realise it's produced by The Asylum.

At least Frankenstein's Army was much better 10 times than this film!

[Hoagy]

The Joneses. Orm social science fiction?

[ThryllSeekyr]

80's revival with Romancing the Stone and it's sequel Jewel of the Nile.

I might have paid more attention as well, but I was playing games on the computer.

They don't know how to make movies as charming as these any more.

[Frank]

You forgot to tell us whether you would have done Kathleen Turner back then and whether you would still do her now, Thryllseekr. Lego Movie: Batman's darkness song is the best NIN/Linkin parody I've ever heard

http://youtu.be/pqv_LUStxDw

[Colin Zeal]

I watched One Day last night. If it wasn't for the announcer telling me at the start of the film that it was making its network premier on 15th July (same date as the characters in the film meet on throughout the years) I wouldn't have noticed this nice if fairly irrelevant touch.

Although I have read the book I don't have the same fondness for it that many people seem to have so didn't feel outraged at Anne Hathway being cast as Emma, and didn't think she was completely unsuited for the part. Jim Sturgess as Dexter was pretty good but was let down by the necessary changes made to adapt the book for the screen. Dexter is a fairly loveable dickhead for most of the book but the dickhead aspect didn't really come off on-screen. There's a bit where Dexter turns up to see his parents drunk and makes a fool of himself, but you can't really tell this is the case until his father points it out to him. Was this bad acting or bad editing/scripting? I couldn't tell. Decent film but one I'm glad to have only bothered watching on the TV because I had nothing else to do.