Last movie watched...

[The Legendary Shark]

Perhaps this conversation needs another thread?

[HOO-HAA]

Well, we rented DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK tonight.

Three words: GREMLINS without Gizmo 

[SmallBlueThing]

The DAY OF THE DEAD remake. Much earlier in this thread, i referred to it as "a whole bucketful of shit". My considered reappraisal is that you may in fact need two buckets.

SBT

[Gonk]

If you watch it a third time will you need three buckets? 

                                               


Watched the film "The Mummy" last night. The usual rubbish of finding ancient Egyptians remains and ressurrecting them through ritual sacrifice and "The Book of the Dead". The usual treasure hunters and Mummy's curse. Really monotonous, unimaginative bilge lacking any spark of charm or humour.

[HOO-HAA]

The DAY OF THE DEAD remake. Much earlier in this thread, i referred to it as "a whole bucketful of shit". My considered reappraisal is that you may in fact need two buckets.

Yeah, it's really, really, really bad. REALLY bad. Very uncool movie 

[Tiplodocus]

WINGS OF DESIRE
Which I always thought I'd seen but hadn't. It was great. I think I could have watched more of the first hour - the Angels just observing and calming.

RUMOUR HAS IT
Wouldn't it be a great idea if we made a sort of sequel to THE GRADUATE starring jennifer Anniston and Kevin Costner where we try and derive laughs from the thought that Jennifer accidentally sleeps with her own father. Wouldn't it be great?. No. There is a lot wrong with this film (and I have  very high Anniston Tolerance) and to even get it to work, Costner would have to be the most charismatic man on the planet.  And he ain't all that.

[HOO-HAA]

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER.

We enjoyed it. Pretty much typical Marvel fare; perhaps my least favourite of the current crop, but still pretty good.

[SquashedFly]

Hobo With a Shotgun.

It was just the right amount of messed up. I quite enjoyed the look of the film and anything with Rutger Hauer is worth at least a watch. It made me think of the Punisher Max Series and the second movie with Ray Stevenson, as shit as it was it looked alright.

[Beaky Smoochies]

The DAY OF THE DEAD remake. Much earlier in this thread, i referred to it as "a whole bucketful of shit". My considered reappraisal is that you may in fact need two buckets.

The truly WORST thing about that movie is it was a genuinely wasted opportunity to film George Romero's original script for Day... (all 160-odd pages of it), considering the greater cost-effective affordability of practical and visual effects in 2008 compared to 1985, it would have been doable for a relatively modest sum, plus with DVD and Blu ray, you could have had both a (inevitable) tight R-rated theatrical cut as well as an extended and unrated (meaning full-on Savini gore galore) version, alas...

[brendan1]

Hobo With a Shotgun.

It was just the right amount of messed up. I quite enjoyed the look of the film and anything with Rutger Hauer is worth at least a watch. It made me think of the Punisher Max Series and the second movie with Ray Stevenson, as shit as it was it looked alright.

I enjoyed "Hobo" too. As OTT and ridiculous as the title would suggest, and Hauer gives it some acting gravitas by playing the titular Hobo totally straight.

[Van Dom]

I liked Hobo... too,felt like it came straight out of the 80's what with all the neon and the Mad Max-style punks and everything. Hauer played it brilliantly. I think I preferred this to Machete.

[von Boom]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) - I've been reading the books again, and decided to give this another chance. I've not seen it since it was released, and unfortunately it was still a little bit shit.

I realise, however, that were two things that brought it down for me. First is the score. The music never seemed to fit the action on the screen and is maybe just too in your face for something as witty as Hitchhiker's.

The second is Sam Rockwell. He was probably the worst single choice for Zaphod they could have come up with. His bipolar portrayal of the supercoolhip Zaphod was a tragedy.

JvB

[Gonk]

For the umpteenth time I watched "Kelly's Heroes". This is one of my favourite films. I love the cast and the humour of it and the pastiche elements of Western/War movie. Like I've explained, it's one of my all time films because the characters are watchable and not dull pretentious types. It's an antidote to nerdy sci-fi and monster movies such as "The Mummy".

[I, Cosh]

Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun Li. Extraordinarily bad. Let's break it down.

• Suitability of leads for a film which should have a lot of fighting (temporarily ignoring the fact that it doesn't.) Very weak. Kristin Kreuk (who?) is pathetic. Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog at least has an imposing physical presence but, as soon as called on to do any actual fighting is seen to be lumbering and unconvincing. Some Irish dude playing M Bison manages an occasional decent sneer but that's about all.


• Use of proper fighters in supporting roles. Slim pickings here too. The only one with any screen time is Robin Shou as Gen, the mysterious master who teaches our pointless heroine how to harness the power of the custard pie and even he has largely been confined to bit parts in second rate kung fu actioners. However, he does have serious form in this type of film having played Liu Kang in both Mortal Kombats and a minor villain in DoA.


• Half-decent fights featuring same. The only remotely passable sequence in the whole film is the one where a group of henchmen are sent to take out this troublesome old man. It is very short.


• Features included solely to please obsessive fans of the source game. A bit of a spinning bird kick in a blue dress and a set of buns. The aforementioned custard pies. Never mind fan-service, they only bothered to include four fighters from the game!


• Incomprehensible sub-plots which take up time which could be better spent on fighting. Finally, a category where this film scores highly. Some rubbish about Bison using his own daughter to absorb his guilt. A pointless buddy cop routine with Chris Klein and the rather saucy Moon Bloodgood.


• Borderline racism. Oh, another good showing here. Now, I don't really have a problem with people of one ethnic background playing characters traditionally of another. Black guys as Norse gods, a Japanese Macbeth,  white Othello or a female Bob Dylan. It's all good for me. Where it becomes a problem is when you feel the need to have an Asian actress play the character as a child before cutting "seamlessly" to the chalk white adult version. Is this Kreuk person really such a big draw that none of the world's many perfectly able Asian actresses could essay the part in her stead?


• Anything actually good about it? Hmm. Let me think. In the final assault on Bison's base, the Thai SWAT guys have two neat takedowns and I think CF would be impressed with their general demeanour. Other than that, the fact that I can't see them making many more?

[Professor Bear]

If you look vaguely Asian, Cosh, or in some cases just have an Asian-sounding name (like Reiko Aylesworth), Hollywood will cast you as an Asian of any sort.  Like Tia Carrere always getting cast as Japanese or Chinese despite being Hawaiian.  Lost's Daniel Dae Kim has played Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hawaiian - I also recall the bloke who played Harry Kim on Voyager complaining on day one that Kim was a Korean - not Chinese - name but the producers were all like "eh, whatever."  But yeah, Legend of Chun Li is just awful on every level - it's like it was made to cash in on the upcoming Dead Or Alive's mix of fights and cheesecake and then didn't bother adding fights or cheesecake.  And "Malachy" Bison?  Fuck that noise.

The Descendants, which is probably one of the better Wes Anderson movies not made by Wes Anderson.  It takes some liberties with the novel for the better, I think, but for the most part cruises by on The Clooney Factor, which is a minor drawback as I'm not entirely sure that the central conceit of someone choosing Shaggy Doo's slimy married banker over Clooney's quiet and decent lawyer is convincing even if it was someone else in Clooney's role, though they try to make him look even older than he actually is with super-grey hair, except when it catches the wind he looks like a Super Sayin from Dragonball, making this probably the best live action Dragonball movie yet made.  I did wonder about my pavlovian hostility to Clooney's elder daughter but then it clicked she was in that awful Secret Life of the American Teenager show, which even I couldn't watch, although she can actually act when she wants to if this is any indicator, meaning she likely has a long career of American Pie spin-offs ahead of her.  The rest of the cast are serviceable, though for some reason I laughed at the sight of Beau Bridges and can't understand why - possibly I am amused by him starring in something other than rubbish genre telly.  He's okay here, mind.
Good flick.