Last movie watched...

[COMMANDO FORCES]

Through some appalling luck I ended up seeing this thing in the cinema three times.

How on Earth was that possible, If I didn't like a film there is no way anyone would be able to make me watch it again and then again, for good measure. Please inform us of the technique that was used to catch you out, so that we can all avoid it 

[I, Cosh]

THE MUMMY RETURNS  - The Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Stephen Sommers etc. version from the turn of the millenium. 

More like "The Shit Returns". 

If we can keep this going, I really hope I don't enjoy the new Batman film. In fact I may pretend it's rubbish anyway just so I can use the line.

[radiator]

I might go and watch Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, for similar reasons.

[TordelBack]

How on Earth was that possible, If I didn't like a film there is no way anyone would be able to make me watch it again and then again, for good measure. Please inform us of the technique that was used to catch you out, so that we can all avoid it 

It's a tragic if unsurprisingly boring story. Having enjoyed the first one, I had arranged to see the second with the missus, but before we got a chance to go I ended up in the pub with some old friends and the next thing I knew we were in the cinema, drunkenly watching and probably disrupting The Mummy Returns.  Obviously I couldn't stand-up the good woman, so I suffered through another more sober viewing, which made even less sense.   I thought that was the end of the matter.

The very same week, we were having a work outing, with different 'surprise' bits organised by different people: one group did drinks and snacks in the office, then one group arranged a trip out, and one group organised a meal and dacning afterwards.  The 'trip out' component was, well, you're way ahead of me. No quantity of apertifs could make this bearable, but as the then-boss, I also couldn't run out.  It was even worse than the Sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music of the previous year, or the excruciating Karaoke night of the following year.  There's something to be said for going bust.

the epilogue was very well handled - the aging of the characters was very restrained

You have got to be kidding - it had the entire audience in stitches - me included - when we saw it.

Ah, well I'd heard this was the case, and was literally bracing myself for terrible prosthetic wrinkles and those awful white splodges at the temples that they were always using on Commander Riker to indicate 'even further into the future' in ST:TNG.  As it was I thought Harry and Ginny looked just right for well-preserved mid-late 30s, as did Malfoy - Hermione and particularly Ron were less successful, but it certainly wasn't jarring.  It should be noted that the legitimate, shop-bought DVD I watched was possibly the worst-quality legal transfer of a modern movie I've ever watched - everything kept slipping out of focus (presumably something to do with converting from 3D, maybe?), almost constantly in terms of background but more disconcertingly on foregrounded faces.  So that may have mitigated any obvious howlers.

Love your idea for an animated sequence instead though, maybe picking up on the (rather lovely) shadow-puppetry from the Three Brothers/Deathly Hallows animation in Part 1.

As to the Aberforth/Albus stuff, I loved it in the book, but I think even Rowling feels she failed to make the story clear - Dumbledore's love for Grindlewald, and his battles with his own thirst for power, should have given the whole thing a bit of much-needed 'depth' (insofar as such a thing is possible in Potterland).

[Roger Godpleton]

Harold & Kumar 3D. Having not seen the first two movies in this series I felt somewhat bewildered by some of the more esoteric references to the rich & nuanced mythology that has clearly been developed, but this was a decent enough time waster. Enjoyable turn from Danny Trejo as Danny Trejo.

[Tiplodocus]

I accidentally ended up seeing BATMAN RETURNS twice in one day. And having beer and pizza to accompany it.  But that was me thinking a bird had stood me up so we went to see it with my mates only for her to turn up later in the evening. So I pretended I hadn't seen it (or eaten pizza and drank beer) and we went out to do exactly what I'd done six hours previously (well, not "exactly"...).

But I quite enjoyed the film (and her company) so didn't mind.

[Satanist]

I was on a long flight which was shit and then got even shitter when they showed Jack Frost with Michael Keaton as a dad reincarnated as a snowman. Imagine my joy when I had to change to another plane just as it kicked off all again. Jack fucking Frost twice in one day.

I suppose I didnt HAVE to watch it again but I was tired.

[von Boom]

Didn't you have anything more entertaining to do? Like jabbing a fork into your thigh repeatedly.

JvB

[radiator]

I saw Up recently - I didn't really know what to expect as I didn't really care for Ratatouille and I thought Wall-E was a bit overrated, but ended up loving it.

It provided pretty much everything I look for in a movie - it was touching, action-packed and hilarious ('Kevin' is a wonderful creation and is undoubtedly one of the best bits of animation I've seen - so much character).

Got me a little choked up, too.

The villain reveal was predictable, yet still very unlikely (wouldn't he have been about a hundred years old?), but overall it didn't really spoil my enjoyment.

Beautiful film in every way.

[brendan1]

The remake of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

Not really sure it needed remaking, although Fincher does his usual good job.

[Professor Bear]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt2 - Eh.  Just... eh.  Not sure what I was supposed to make of it, but I'm not the target audience, really, as I like films and read all the Harry Potter books.
As TB mentioned, lots of explosions with FX ranging from okay to great, people dying off a lot without much fuss or bother, and the kids destroying four of the seven magic McGuffins and then declaring that "the snake is the last one!" had me reasonably sure that maths doesn't work like that, but then if there was anything that could wave its hands and say "a wizard did it" it's this franchise.
There's no focus on any theme or character arc, just reveals piled up in the hope it all looks like a grand plan coming together rather than a rush of flashes and loud music.  I didn't like the epilogue, either, but that was more from wanting to see how Draco redeemed himself given he's at least as significant a heel in need of a face turn as Snape at this point, surely?  Yet all we get is a nod of the head between him and Harry, and while heartening to see the good will out in even utter rotters, I want to know how this came about and the film offers no explanation.  Plus, he seems to have called his kids Scorpion and Childstabber, which is not generally a good sign in any fictional universe where someone called Lupine turns out to be the werewolf.

Black Death - in which Sean Bean continues his quest to become the English Bill Paxton by showing up to play in anything at all as long as he can have his clogs popped horribly around the third act.  It's an awful film, made with that shaky camerawork approach that only serves to make it look like a fan film by some cosplayers who shelled out for a van to drive them to a particularly nice-looking patch of woods, even though there's been perfectly serviceable fan films made on just that premise in the past that aren't nearly as bad as this.  Case in point (and it even has a Bean connection): http://stagevu.com/video/oisricamiqjy

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger: The Movie: Fateful War - which I watched because it was in old-school 3D with the red and green glasses, which is not really an ideal approach given how colourful your average Super Sentai movie tends to be, but nonsensical plot, terrible effects and dire acting aside this was a gas.  And my word, but those are some pretty ladies for a kiddie show.

[TordelBack]

...the kids destroying four of the seven magic McGuffins and then declaring that "the snake is the last one!" had me reasonably sure that maths doesn't work like that...

I'm sure you don't care, but the seven horcruxes were:

[spoiler]Tom Riddle's Diary - Destroyed by Harry in HP2.

Gaunt's Ring - Destroyed by Dumbledore between HP5 and HP6, leading to his fatal injury (note that the stone in the ring is also one of the Deathly Hallows, the Resurrection Stone).

Slytherin's Locket - Swapped for a fake by Sirius' Black's brother Regulus, stolen by Mundungus Fletcher between HP6 and HP 7 and recovered from Umbridge and destroyed by Ron in HP7.

Ravenclaw's Diadem - destroyed by Crabbe in the book, and Harry in the film (HP8).

Harry Potter - Unintentionally created when Voldemort murdered Lily, and destroyed by him in HP8.

Nagini - A lapse in Rowling's imagination, but destroyed by Neville in HP 8 (fulfilling the ambiguity of Prof Trelawney's prophecy raised in HP6).[/spoiler]

Note that in the books each one is destroyed by a different person, in the films Harry does two.

[Professor Bear]

Harry had to do two because Crabbe was written out of HP8 for being a naughty boy.

I did not realise that the various Horcruxikeseses were scuppered in earlier films.  Maths has been saved for us all.

[radiator]

Tbh, the whole horcrux thing was really poorly communicated in both book and film.

[TordelBack]

In the films certainly, with partial explanations being spread across three movies but never really pulled together.  In fact the films frequently dropped the ball in terms of explaining their plots, Prisoner of Azkaban (probably the best of them) perversely being the worst offender.  The failure to tackle the significance of the Deathly Hallows in the second part of the current flick, having set them up as a major issue in the first, was even more annoying.

The books, I'd disagree there - a lot of the fun of reading the last two books was puzzling out the horcruxes and keeping track of them, the ongoing confusion was a real part of the style, and I suspect intentional.  I also loved the horcrux switcheroo at the end of Half Blood Prince, which was a pretty inspired kick in the teeth.

As to Draco, he Narcissa and eventually even Lucius it wasn't so so much that they were redeemed or reconciled, as that they discovered they much as they loved power, they just didn't have the balls for the evil that offered it to them - essentially they loved each other, and couldn't square that with having to be egoless tools of Voldemort's regimes.  Draco couldn't kill Dumbledore, he couldn't betray Harry to his death, and in the end all the family wanted was to get away from Voldemort. They weren't good, they just weren't as bad as they pretended to be.