Last movie watched...

[mogzilla]

my girl loves "how to train your dragon" and theres a sequel coming to dvd!

[Professor Bear]

What's that?  A forum thread going off-topic?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHj0dtSwxqQ

Thor/Power Pack is actually a more recent effort, being one of Marvel's all-ages outings made to look like a cartoon, though the script by improv comic Alex Zalban has a few Marvel references only fanboys will spot and errs towards the romanticism of the Happy Ending.  I know a lot of old-school PP fans hate the cartoony stuff - and making the family upper-middle class suburbanites rather than working class project dwellers does alter the dynamic drastically from the original books - but they're enjoyable on their own terms and may serve as a gateway drug to the original.  It's a digest collection, too, so it's quite cheap compared to the 20 odd quid being asked for the reprints of the 1980s PP title.

The boy is Norse-myth-obsessed at the moment, and a recent DVD viewing of the superb Thor movie was the icing on the cake, opening up the idea of Thor et al in the modern day, as well as the idea of multiple interpretations of the same myths and characters, which is all good.

Avengers Disassembled: Thor may then be a must.  Brian Bendis for some reason insisted upon terminating all the Avengers tie-in titles before he relaunched that book and Dan Jurgens' Thor was one of the first casualties, even though it was then roughly a third of the way into a multi-part storyline set in an alternate future and had an in-built means to keep out of the way of any Avengers event.  Nonetheless, spinning out of an event doesn't make the story difficult to get into: Thor and the populace of Asgard discover they're trapped in a perpetual loop of the same few mythological tropes and stories playing out again and again over the span of eternity and set to bringing about Ragnarok so it will finally come to an end.  It gets a bit heavy and it's probably no spoiler to tell you that everyone dies because that is entirely the point of the story, but it's well worth a look as it comes off less superhero-y and more like a Manowar album with even more vikings and death than usual, an while quite gruesome and gory (the cast do die and lose body parts to gain wisdom, after all), it's not particularly graphic so may be good for younger readers.

[mogzilla]

going off thread? how? i last watched "how to train your dragon" again cos my nipper loves it and watches it all the time!

[Robert Frazer]

I watched Wayne's World for the first time today and it was indeed excellent! I was expecting the film to be self-consciously zany and so I was surprised when it turned out to be relatively subdued and 'realistic', but I have to agree with Roger Ebert in his reviews when he says tha Wayne and Garth just radiate beguiling easy-going good-natured goodwill, spiced a little with a pinch of playful mischief. Even though you'd expect a film like this to date quickly as pop culture moves on, it still felt fresh and vivid; I just had a huge warm smile on my face throughout.

And yes, Tia Carrere was schwingingly babe-dacious.

[radiator]

I love Wayne's World, but IMO it hasn't dated terribly well. Still a nostalgic pleasure though. Wayne's World 2 was always a bit pants, mind. Much the same with Austin Powers - the first one is a classic IMO, but the sequels get worse and worse. Never been able to sit through Goldmember. Apparently Ap4 is in production now (shudder).

[mygrimmbrother]

Dogville and Manderlay. Can't get enough von Trier at the moment, thought both were thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking films, and although initially wary of the stage device used, after 5 minutes it wasn't an issue at all. In fact, if anything, it made the performances even more engrossing because the set was pretty much stripped down to the bone. Apparently there's a third planned to round of the trilogy, although it has been 6 years siince Manderlay and he's been busy with other unrelated projects since.

[Eric Plumrose]

STRAW DOGS. Not the PeckinPAH version and all the better for it.

[Keef Monkey]

The Incredible Hulk, which was a pretty ideal way to slob out on a Saturday night. Have never read Hulk, so most of my interest in the character comes from nostalgia for the tv show I loved as a kid, and it ticked all the boxes for what I want to see in a Hulk movie (the Ang Lee version didn't actually tick any of them if I'm honest, although Jennifer Connelly was in it and that's a box not enough movies tick).

Good (mostly) angst-free superhero smushing times, and when I realized it was going to climax in the hero/villain fighting in the street and flinging cars and whatnot at each other I was happy as larry.

[SmallBlueThing]

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Much to my surprise this was much more fun than Hellraiser- despite my Very Serious Teenage Horror Fan Memory telling me it was awful. It's still hamstrung by Claire Bloody Higgins, although this time she's joined by some of the most hilariously bad actors in the history of film, so at least she fits in.

Any "review" I could do would quite rightly be seen as just shouting my unbridled joy at the ludicrousness of many of the scenes, the dialogue seemingly written to put your teeth on edge and leave you slack-jawed at its awfulness, the magnificent cheapness of the sets- using techniques straight out of early sixties television to suggest corridors, and heavy stone walls which ripple when actors collide with them... which the director then films them doing many times, the grating obviousness of the imagery (Frank's personal Hell is a personal highlight of tawdry sub-student filmmaking, trying to be transgressive and failing in every respect), and the hilarity caused by Bob ("He may not be good, but at least he's Keen") Keen's effects (Dr Channard flying about on the tentacle and Julia slipping out of her skin and flying down the tunnel are very hard to beat).

It is, all told, spectacularly awful- but still manages to be far more entertaining than Hellraiser and I loved every second.

SBT

[Professor Bear]

Clear and Present Danger - about fifteen minutes from the end when Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan hurls his blubbery middle-aged carcass across the room at Joaquim Almeida's Felix Cortez and it looks like someone's dad tripping over a sofa, it finally twigged that this was not a disappointing political thriller about what happens when the Prez makes a bad call and nor was it an overlong and underexciting action movie, it was a film where Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) fights his evil double.  It was a head-slapping moment, too, as the phrase "a Latin Jack Ryan" is used no less than four times throughout the film, and there's one scene where Jack and his evil twin are both trying to figure out what caused an explosion and both come to the same conclusion at exactly the same time.  Too subtle, Philip Noyce movie - too subtle by far.
It were okay, I guess, with an economic use of slow motion (believe it or not, there was actually a time when slow motion was used for something other than making action scenes unexciting) and even some first-person footage of blokes firing guns and that like in Calla Doody, but the political stuff falls a little flat and could have done with some David Mamet rewrites or something, as there's a couple of scenes that could have been absolutely killer with the right mix of dialog and smarm, but as they are they just come off as people being huffy.

Not great, but a decent time filler that - apart from having scenes with Movie Computers logic and brick-sized cellphones - has dated quite well.

[KingMonkeysUnkle]

Strippers versus Werewolves
Watched the trailer for it the other day, and as you can imagine the title appears to be the ONLY good thing about it!

Sent from my LG-P920 using Tapatalk

[Robert Frazer]

I'm not sure about this forum's tolerance level for anime so forgive me if I'm breaching a social rule, but the anime racing movie Redline was released on DVD this week and it's a cracking spurt of adrenal fun. Imagine if Wacky Races grew up in the punk era and was lashed onto the canvas by graffiti artists, and you'll have a sense of its style - an slick quality of studied anarchism which would suit the early 2000AD well, in fact. Riot grrrls in dayglo costumes, spectacular pompadours, piston-headed robots and unobtanium-fuelled nitro boosts - I know it sounds like a cliché, but it honestly is a rollercoaster future-fantasy experience that'll knock you back into your couch.

[Keef Monkey]

We watched Your Highness last night. It's subjectively a bad movie, but was pretty much what our minds were up to after a long week so we actually found it a good laugh. Whether you can enjoy it probably depends on your tolerance for Danny McBride, we're Eastbound and Down fans so we can take a fair bit of his schtick.

[El Chivo]

Attack The Block
It was sick, blood
(ie highly entertaining, gentlemen)

Chi

[SpetsnaZ99]

Devils Double.

Fantastic. An excellent story. How Dominic Cooper managed to play both parts was brilliant. But i wished they didnt have the stupid obligatory 'Love Scene'.