Last movie watched...

[TordelBack]

I can't bring myself to watch that Walking with Dinosaurs film. How can one of the best paleoecology shows of all time be treated with such disrespect!

I'm sort of hoping there'll be a DVD option without the voice track, sort of like M*A*S*H without the laughter track or Blade Runner without Sigue Sigue Sputnik Ford's voiceover, because the landscapes and dinos themselves are fantastic, and there's nothing (very much) in the sequence of events that'd be out of place in a nature documentary.   As it is, the product-as-screened is for small kids, and it certainly seemed to be very good at that level.  I was at a preview screening that was wall-to-wall kids and it held everyone's attention - no running about or throwing stuff.

[JamesC]

Fred Claus.

An enjoyable piece of schmaltz that brought a tear to the eye when they saved Christmas at the end.

[Goaty]

Fred Claus.

An enjoyable piece of schmaltz that brought a tear to the eye when they saved Christmas at the end.

Yep that is one of films that freak me out if I were a kid watch that, cos too many actors heads add on elf bodies! weird!

[Ghost MacRoth]

Man of Steel

Like the start, and the reworking of the basic story, but it quickly descended into the predictable and flashy.  The CG in the fight scene was a bit shoddy, but overall, an enjoyable enough romp.

[Theblazeuk]

Hm.

But[spoiler] Superman lets his dad die and then undermines that whole sacrifice in the end anyway to become Superman! Rargh.[/spoiler]

Watched Wreck It Ralph. Fun, loved the animation, bit underwhelmed by the characters and the story in the end.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Aye, but while he can do many things, he can't tell the future!  What worked when he was young clearly wouldn't later on.  Not defending it greatly....just sayin'.  I don't think it was really a film for any kind of actual thought to be applied.  Bubble gum for the brain, and VFX for the vision. Nothing more.

[Richmond Clements]

The Hobbit Part 2: Enter the Dragon.
Bloody awesome. I don't care how it is different from the book. I don't care that they introduced fictional characters into a work of fiction. It was a hell of a ride from start to finish, and I cannot wait until the next one.

[TordelBack]

Battle Los Angeles.  Well, watching it currently.  It's not as bad as I'd been led to believe.   Eckhart's dimpled chin is pretty good in it, and aside from the endless Hoo-Rah Marines! bollocksology it's not really a bad action flick. At least all their honouring-the-fallen and retreat-helling is undermined by their monumental incompetence.  As always with SF stuff I do wish someone would spend 5 bloody minutes thinking about the 'S' element, or failing that some internal logic to their daft premise. 

I particularly love how [spoiler]identifying the aliens' secret weakness as "shoot them in the chest" turns them from unkillable armoured terminators to instakill cannon fodder[/spoiler].

Anyway, I've seen a lot worse.

[TordelBack]

The Hobbit Part 2: Enter the Dragon.
Bloody awesome. I don't care how it is different from the book. I don't care that they introduced fictional characters into a work of fiction. It was a hell of a ride from start to finish, and I cannot wait until the next one.

You give me courage. 

Booking tickets for Thursday, excited as only an idiot can be.

[Ghost MacRoth]

You know, I was thinking the same thing as Michelle Rodriguez cries 'they're going down like bowling pins' while they mowed them down in an armoured car.  I assume that was the only armoured car on the planet or maybe they wouldn't have just had their arses kicked.  It's a terrible film though, way too 'hoo-rah' in the direction, the music is intrusive and distracting, the characters are cardboard, the aliens are straight out a 50's 'b' movie, and the sentimentality is overwhelming.  Having said that, it is well paced, even if pointless. 

Plus, there's no tits in it.

[TordelBack]

It's a terrible film though, way too 'hoo-rah' in the direction, the music is intrusive and distracting, the characters are cardboard, the aliens are straight out a 50's 'b' movie, and the sentimentality is overwhelming. 

All this is true, but it has a lot of nice explosions and the urban setting and even the ghastly camera work has some vague charm.  The wife came in from work earlier and thought I'd bought a new Call of Duty game, which more or less sums it up.

If only the aliens had left their C&C units in orbit, eh?

[Ghost MacRoth]

Now just you stop applying sense to this shitty script right there or you're gonna ruin it for me, lol!!

[Professor Bear]

Aye, but while he can do many things, he can't tell the future!  What worked when he was young clearly wouldn't later on.  Not defending it greatly....just sayin'.

Except it wasn't working when he was young, which is why he went hobo for a decade.
I have come around a little on the portrayal of the film's central character, as Kevin Costner's Johnathan Kent is a small-minded xenophobe concerned only with his own small part of the world and whose attitude is that helping other people is inherently wrong unless it comes with some kind of recompense to balance out the expenditure of risk (exposure) - thus he is a perfect example of modern American values, which is not the radical democracy of its founding fathers, nor is it the optimistic postwar work-in-progress where "the Dream" seemed real again and someone like the Golden Age Superman could capture the imagination, it's the greedy, hysterical plutocracy of the Tea Party and the Superman of Man Of Steel is a perfect example of their idea of a hero: a thoughtless, violent, might-is-right thug who neither deserves or understands the power that he wields with indifference to its effects upon the Little People.
Man Of Steel's problem isn't that it's a poor version of Superman, it's that it's a perfect version of Superman for the age we live in.

Still a shit film, too.

[TordelBack]

Professor Bear movie insights remain a highlight of the internet.

[JOE SOAP]

a thoughtless, violent, might-is-right thug who neither deserves or understands the power that he wields with indifference to its effects upon the Little People. Man Of Steel's problem isn't that it's a poor version of Superman, it's that it's a perfect version of Superman for the age we live in.

Frank Miller did it 30 years ago. Nothing's changed.