Last movie watched...

[HdE]

Methinks Amy Adams' riduculously awful 'falling through mid-air to certain death' acting may have a little to do with that.

[Tiplodocus]

Superman Returns failed to get a decent Lois Lane as well.  It's a sad day when the best recent incarnation was the animated one followed by Smallville's Erica Durance.

[Professor Bear]

I thought Bosworth was an okay Lois, because she downplayed the obvious implications of her character waking up one day and not remembering the guy who'd got her pregnant.  There's never even a hint of her resenting her child, or viewing him as a reminder of what must have been a truly traumatic stretch of her life, which I think gives the character a kind of class she never usually displays.  It's only when Superman's around that she lapses into being the kind of dick that other actresses play the character as, especially when she chucks the selfless, kind and loyal Richard for someone she must surely view at that point as her rapist.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have the best last hour of any film ever, but I wouldn't know as the first 30 minutes are fucking appalling and it's become the third film I've ever walked out on (if you count Just Married, which was playing in my house).  Despite being filmed in a super-serious way, it's somehow also disgusted at the silliness of its own premise despite being the fourth live-action movie adaptation of a billion-dollar worldwide franchise.
A noisy, nonsensical and amateurish piece of shit that is everything that's wrong with cinema - I fully expect that it has made a billion dollars already.

[The Legendary Shark]

Horns. Doesn't know whether to be a comedy, a horror or a drama and so ends up being nothing very much.

[pictsy]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have the best last hour of any film ever, but I wouldn't know as the first 30 minutes are fucking appalling and it's become the third film I've ever walked out on (if you count Just Married, which was playing in my house).  Despite being filmed in a super-serious way, it's somehow also disgusted at the silliness of its own premise despite being the fourth live-action movie adaptation of a billion-dollar worldwide franchise.
A noisy, nonsensical and amateurish piece of shit that is everything that's wrong with cinema - I fully expect that it has made a billion dollars already.

You have confirmed some of my suspicions about this film.  I wasn't considering watching it due to the involvement of Michael Bay as Producer because I felt the film would just be a noisy, nonsensical and amateurish piece of shit.  It's nice for my preconception to be validated.

I would much rather watch the first TMNT film.  There is a charm to the film that will never fail to seduce me.

[Professor Bear]

I watched that series of films a few years ago and while they certainly aren't Citizen Kanes, there's a fantasy quality to them that the new film lacks, set as it is in a dour, joyless, grubby and thoroughly-dated version of NYC compared to the colourful sewer undergrounds of before.  The characters even seem like children in the '90s flicks compared to their modern counterparts who just sound like unfunny action movie leads with not much to distinguish the voice actors in terms of delivery or individual character.

I'm not really a Turtles fan so my expectations were pretty low, but even so it was still a shockingly poor film.

[pictsy]

I loved the Turtles as a kid, so there is a nostalgia factor as well that is keeping me away from the new film.  I have recently watched the original kids TV show again and found it did not age well.  Haven't read the original comics in a long time but remembered them as being the best representation of the Turtles I had experienced (and surprised how different they were).  The first film is the only one of the films I have time for today.  I agree that the Turtles had a more teenage quality to them in that film and a good amount of depth as well (because we should never presume teenagers aren't capable of depth).  From what I've seen from trailers of this new film I would agree with your assessment of the Turtles characterisations.

I think they look stupid in the new film, too.

[TordelBack]

I loved the Turtles as a kid, so there is a nostalgia factor as well that is keeping me away from the new film. 

My 8-yr old loves the current Turtles cartoon, and even he can't be bothered to see the new film.  "Why did they have to make it look so stupid?", he enquires every time the trailer runs, which is pretty damning criticism from someone who enjoys Transformers movies - unironically.

[pictsy]

Has your son seen the original film?

[Tiplodocus]

REIGN OF FIRE
Christian Bale and Matthew McConnaughey, both bearded and weird, fight dragons in a post apocalyptic Britain.

Actually a solidly entertaining 100 minutes with some fantastic looking dragons (when you see them) and two really tense sequences (trying to kill a dragon by throwing themselves out of a helicopter (really) and cat and mouse with the big bad at the end). Oh and Gerard Butler pops up playing a slightly prettier version of James McAvoy.

How come Isabella Scorupco appears to fly a helicopter through dragon infested skies with impunity? 'Cos she's a bond girl, of course.  But where do they get all of their fuel?

Oh and the box art/poster totally lies to you.

[Goaty]

Darknet

Well it not a film, but web series of 6 episodes, horror anthology series, it was on Netflix, and thought that was so brilliant dark, show the dark side of human, link to media social etc, very V/H/S style, with different stories, but warning some was shock!

[Recrewt]

Seems like we have had a busy weekend watching movies folks.  This weekend I saw:

Transcendence

Blimey, this was hard work.  I think there is a good movie in there but they managed to cover it up with a lot of nonsense.  Even now, I'm not clear whether this movie was taking a pro or anti technological stance.  Both sides of the argument seemed as selfish and fanatic as the other so it's hard to know who we are supposed to root for.  There are also plenty of quality actors who were massively underused. 

Invasion USA

Ahhh, thats better - after the confusing trascendence I needed to just put my brain in nuetral so decided to spend a couple of hours with Chuck 'Hunter' Norris.  I can't recommend this enough.  Its got alligator wrestling, double denim, twim uzis and bazookas being shot form the hip.  If you love crazy 80s movies like Cobra then you should definitely see what has to be one of Chuck's finest ever movies.     

[Professor Bear]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d55RUgUbW3g

No-one makes dumbass mid-80s action movies like Chuck Norris before you knew he was a homophobic racist scumbag who likes to bully children.  In my mind, I like to think of there being two Chuck Norris-s-s-s-s - the cartoon character from Karate Kommandos who does jump-kicks off dolphins and insists we be fair to each other and stay healthy and who occasionally makes cartoons for grown-ups like Lone Wolf McQuade* and who sadly passed away after making bear-wrestling reality tv documentary series Walker: Texas Ranger, and the other Chuck Norris who shares a name and a 'tash with the nice Chuck but is an asshole.


* A movie which features a scene where McQuade gets drunk and drives out of his own grave in a pickup truck.

[von Boom]

Snowpiercer. I've not read the graphic novel so I can't make comparisons, but it was fairly derivative of many other dystopian stories (class structure bad, equality for all good, blah, blah, blah), and while there were some really good performances (Tilda Swinton), overall it was kind of dull. In the end it was all pretty pointless.

[radiator]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Well this is shaping up to be a very solid little trilogy - who'd have thought it? While I didn't like this one quite as much as the first, it's still really good stuff. Refreshingly bleak in tone with some good character work - in fact it doesn't really feel like a blockbuster at all for the first hour or so (which is a complement, in that the film doesn't need to rely on action set-pieces to hold the viewer's attention). As with Rise... I never really thought the simian characters looked anywhere approaching photo-real, but it just goes to show how much good writing and performances aids with suspension of disbelief.

For me it all fell apart a bit towards the end - the trite countdown/exploding building/deathmatch scenario felt contrived, unnecessary and over the top, and the 'apes riding horses wielding machineguns that apparently have an unlimited supply of ammo' crossed the line into outright schlocky B-movie silliness. In fact overall I thought it would have been a much more effective film if the scale had been much smaller - with just a handful of humans and apes. I think it would have paradoxically would have made for a tighter, more tense story with higher stakes.

4/5.