2014 MOVIE OMNIBUS THREAD

[FluffSnackwell]

Amanda Pays' hotness is eternal because she vanished from movies unlike a bunch of these other skags.

[Jingus]

The Zero Theorem: I dunno, Gilliam's movies often tend to depress me more often than not. I don't find Brazil to be any kind of masterpiece at all, mostly because it's just SO damn needlessly, relentlessly grim and ugly and off-putting and generally seeming to contain not a single moment of warmth or joy or hope, wherein we watch our poor hero get tortured for two hours straight and have every bit of his life ruined by inches. (For something that's NOT a horror flick or a war movie, that ain't a compliment.) And the real-life stories about all the depressing shit going on BEHIND the cameras during pretty much all of Terry's movies certainly don't help.

So even though The Zero Theorem has the usual awesome Gilliam bizarro-world cast and probably some off-kilter eye candy and certainly an intriguing premise, I don't exactly plan on watching it. After all, according to this IMDB page, it's really not got a hell of a lot that appeals to me, and OH SHIT SON, WHOOMP THERE IT IS: "CO-STARRING TILDA SWINTON". Okay, nevermind, I'mma watch all this movie now.

Poor Danny Boyle. Nobody saw Sunshine.

I'm your huckleberry. Good movie, lots to recommend it for. First time I ever saw Chris Evans actually, y'know, act rather than just being "that guy who tries way too hard at being The Funny One in comic-book ensemble films". Michelle Yeoh was also radiant and amazing in a movie which did not require her to kick anyone in the face, making me wanna see more of her dramatic work. The whole thing started to go off the rails towards the end (the postproduction effects involving The Antagonist were kinda neat, but gave me the faint impression that this good-on-paper character simply turned out underwhelming on the screen and the filmmakers needed to slap an extra layer of gimmickry on him) but overall it was a nice movie with a great cast and some truly spectacular visuals.

Also, anyone who's a fan of that one, check out an unfairly obscure Swiss scifi movie called Cargo. I'd describe it in short as "the best Alien ripoff without an actual alien", but it's a damn fine piece of (mostly) hard science fiction with a lot of great images which did remind me of Sunshine (accidentally I'm sure, both movies were produced at about the same time).

 

I would just like to ask Jingus if Stuart Gordon is indeed overrated then what in the blue hell does that make Frank Hennenlotter? The latter's output really isn't even watchable unless you're a douchebag. How can Hennenlotter be any good when the best Hennenlotter movie was obviously Street Trash? And yes; I know that wasn't even a Hennonlotter movie but that's my point exactly.

...what? Seriously, I've got no idea what you're talking about or what prompted this. I've never seen a Hennenlotter movie, they mostly seem to be the sort of trashy body-horror stuff that I don't enjoy at all. Like someone trying to combine Cronenberg with Troma and ending up with a fanbase that apparently calls women "skags". One of his movies (Frankenhooker) appears to be blatantly stealing its entire plot from The Brain That Wouldn't Die of all godforsaken things, plus oh-so-charmingly managing to shoehorn that there "HOOKER~!" into the title. Yeah, this dude's got nothing that appeals to me whatsoever.

As for Gordon: admittedly, I've seen less than half of his overall work: Re-Animator, Robot Jox, Dagon, the Masters of Horror episode "Dreams in the Witch House", and incomplete bits of The Pit and the Pendulum and Castle Freak here and there on television. While I actually kinda liked Robot Jox (aside from that STRANGE final thirty seconds), the others all struck be as being pointlessly over-gory "adaptations" of stories which changed SO much of the authors' original intents that it was practically worthless to fans of the literary versions. He just doesn't GET Lovecraft, shoving in a bunch of shit which ol' Howard Phillips would have been guaranteed to outright hate. Worrisomely perverse sex shit, changing HPL's sorta-atheist worldview (the Old Ones are aliens, not demons) into somehow being vampire-movie psychology complete with Christianity serving as a magic weapon against the forces of evil, all kinds of stuff which indicates that he just doesn't understand the original stories. And his sense of humor, woof, awful. "Hahaha that chick's getting raped by monsters, isn't it HILARIOUS~?"

[Lazlo Woodbine]

I didn't enjoy The Zero Theorem at all, and I'm one of those people who considers Brazil a masterpiece.

[FluffSnackwell]

My point with Gordon is nobody can overrate him because he's only really rated for Re-Animator and From Beyond. How can these cult fuckers be so overrated when they're only really rated on the backs of 2-3 movies?

[Curt McGirt]

The Pit and the Pendulum is pretty good. I agree that Gordon has no conception of Lovecraft (aside from the pre-credit sequence of From Beyond which was basically the entire story). Henenlotter's best film is Brain Damage by far and it is legit great. Christ, the only other movies he made were the horrible Basket Case films, Frankenhooker (which I never saw), and something called Bad Biology. He didn't direct Street Trash.

[Jingus]

My point with Gordon is nobody can overrate him because he's only really rated for Re-Animator and From Beyond. How can these cult fuckers be so overrated when they're only really rated on the backs of 2-3 movies?

I've had insanely nasty arguments with insanely hard-headed people who INSIST that ALL his Lovecraft adaptations are great. Dagon, "Dreams in the Witch House", all of 'em. This has happened to me on several occasions, just involving this one subset of this guy's work.

[Lawful Metal]

Snowpiercer was great. Loved it. Loved Octavia Spencer and Tilda Swinton. Just great. So glad it was actually showing neary house.

[FluffSnackwell]

My point with Gordon is nobody can overrate him because he's only really rated for Re-Animator and From Beyond. How can these cult fuckers be so overrated when they're only really rated on the backs of 2-3 movies?

I've had insanely nasty arguments with insanely hard-headed people who INSIST that ALL his Lovecraft adaptations are great. Dagon, "Dreams in the Witch House", all of 'em. This has happened to me on several occasions, just involving this one subset of this guy's work.

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I'm not a completist fan of any director and don't understand the mentality at all.

[Newb82]

Finally checked out THE PURGE in anticipation of seeing the sequel next weekend.

 

Yes, the premise is ridiculous, but if you're a horror fan, you have probably accepted worse. Thinking about it, if you really want to, one could justify the impossible stats that are given to justify the purge as pure bullshit government propaganda. The movie makes an earnest attempt to sell this reality before the purge starts, which I appreciated. I also thought the presentation of this as a kind of entertainment for the better off was well done, especially the radio DJ casually shrugging off a caller pointing out the obvious: that this is only done to rid the country of homeless and various other "undesirables".

 

I liked Ethan Hawke in this a lot. He was great playing a guy who pretty much owes his entire lifestyle to this annual event, who thinks that bad things will only happen to "those people" and his biggest concern on this night is which yacht to buy. I really liked both he and his wife trying to sell this as a good thing to their children, while you can tell that neither actually believes it. When Hawke finally realizes what is happening and admits to himself that the purge is bullshit, he sells it very effectively. He's also a rare "smart" horror protagonist, in at least he doesn't give his attackers a second chance to get him after getting them down.

 

In another movie, the purger gang, particularly the leader, would have come off to me as a really forced attempt to create memorable villains, but in the world of the movie, I totally bought that privileged, sociopathic little shits like these college students who were born on third base would embrace this idea as a chance to act out their base instincts on their targets while treating it like an opportunity to star in their own horror movie, never comprehending (or probably even ocontemplating) that these are real people they're killing.

 

While the "message" of the movie is pretty damned ham-fisted (there's no way the target of the purgers being black is a coincidence), it does a good job of creating its own reality, and giving villains that are easy to root against. The swerve at the end does seem like an attempt to be "balanced" in going after both the Mitt Romney and Occupy Wall Street types, which I didn't particularly care for. The movie smartly pays off in actually having the bad guys mostly get their just deserts, which is becoming a rarity these days.

 

At the end of the day, I liked this one and am looking forward to checking out ANARCHY, plus I also came away thinking about the various angles of the purge that can be explored, so if this becomes a true franchise, there is at least potential to not make the same movie over and over again.

[Jingus]

Yeah, I'm not a completist fan of any director and don't understand the mentality at all.

Ditto. EVERY artist is gonna trip and fall and produce some really sub-par work, at times. If you keep watching your favorites for long enough, eventually they're (at the very least) gonna have a terrible horrible no-good very-bad day. Shit, I've even seen a bad movie from Akira F'n Kurosawa; his tonally-all-wrong adaptation of The Lower Depths is an unbelievably slow, stagy film which is legitimately supposed to be a comedy but ends up being maybe the single most depressing, suffocating thing the director has ever made. Ditto for Werner Herzog, whose Rescue Dawn is a disappointing bit of self-plagiarism which mostly just makes you wish you were watching other similar-but-much-better Herzog flicks. If THOSE guys can fumble the ball, it's insane to say someone that makes "monsters rape women... a lot" movies like Gordon is somehow a perfect messiah of Art.

[FluffSnackwell]

Well, technically in From Beyond whatsherface was doing the raping.

[Curt McGirt]

Cheap Thrills was great. I wasn't feeling it at first but once they got to the house and things started firing off I was into it. David Koechner is truly wild as the morally bereft rich maniac behind all the mayhem; it's fantastic seeing him pull off such a dark role while still pulling all his goofy faces and acting the fool. Comes off like a good EC Comics story that you could easily fit into an issue of Shock Suspenstories or your random Tales/Vault/Haunt story that doesn't fit the mold. The bearded lead's vocal similarity to Johnny Knoxville is really eerie to boot. Well worth a watch if you have a taste for black humor and a strong stomach.

[Control]

The Zero Theorem: I dunno, Gilliam's movies often tend to depress me more often than not. I don't find Brazil to be any kind of masterpiece at all, mostly because it's just SO damn needlessly, relentlessly grim and ugly and off-putting and generally seeming to contain not a single moment of warmth or joy or hope, wherein we watch our poor hero get tortured for two hours straight and have every bit of his life ruined by inches. (For something that's NOT a horror flick or a war movie, that ain't a compliment.) And the real-life stories about all the depressing shit going on BEHIND the cameras during pretty much all of Terry's movies certainly don't help.

Just out of curiosity, does your objection apply to dystopian fiction in general?

[Niners Fan in CT]

I'm disappointed that I have nobody to discuss Apes with! Right now it's my movie of the summer and maybe the best film I've seen all year.

[EVA]

I'm surprised more people haven't seen it yet. I was planning on seeing it Friday, but plans changed and now I have to wait until next weekend.

[clintthecrippler]

Cheap Thrills was great. I wasn't feeling it at first but once they got to the house and things started firing off I was into it. David Koechner is truly wild as the morally bereft rich maniac behind all the mayhem; it's fantastic seeing him pull off such a dark role while still pulling all his goofy faces and acting the fool. Comes off like a good EC Comics story that you could easily fit into an issue of Shock Suspenstories or your random Tales/Vault/Haunt story that doesn't fit the mold. The bearded lead's vocal similarity to Johnny Knoxville is really eerie to boot. Well worth a watch if you have a taste for black humor and a strong stomach.

 

Agreed on this one. David Koechner's performance is truly amazing here, I would not be stunned if after this movie he ends up with a second cottage career as "sleazy antagonist" in lower-budget horror/suspense flicks.

[epwar]

Pardon the hyperbole, but DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014) might be the best sci-fi flick I've seen in the theater in ages. Remember when sci-fi (and horror) had the power of allegory? This delivers that and more. Also, will we one day see an Oscar nod for a motion capture performance? Andy Serkis as Caesar makes the case and is absolutely incredible, and it isn't just the amazing CGI helping him out. 

[Jingus]

The Zero Theorem: I dunno, Gilliam's movies often tend to depress me more often than not. I don't find Brazil to be any kind of masterpiece at all, mostly because it's just SO damn needlessly, relentlessly grim and ugly and off-putting and generally seeming to contain not a single moment of warmth or joy or hope, wherein we watch our poor hero get tortured for two hours straight and have every bit of his life ruined by inches. (For something that's NOT a horror flick or a war movie, that ain't a compliment.) And the real-life stories about all the depressing shit going on BEHIND the cameras during pretty much all of Terry's movies certainly don't help.

Just out of curiosity, does your objection apply to dystopian fiction in general?

Not most of it. But I do tend to prefer happy endings by default; if someone wants to end their story UNhappily, then they better damn well earn it and make me feel like the tragedy is appropriate and has a point. Gilliam's unhappy endings never gave me that feeling.

[Guest The Magnificent 7]

Yeah I thought Dawn of the Apes was really good, too.  It had a couple of minor flaws (mainly involving guns) that I thought could have been handled better, but it was really entertaining and the apes were awesome.  The gorilla sentries, Caesar first yelling a word, etc. was all handled awesomely. 

 

Spoilers ahoy maybe...

 

Where do monkeys carry their spare mags?  They need some monkey sized cargo pants or something. 

 

There was one shot where I actually saw an ape in the distance do a quick mag change.  For the most part, though, their guns were of the neverending ammunition variety.  Accurate as hell shooting rifles on horseback without any training at all was a bit suspect, though.  Well they're apes, too, so there's that.  Koba was like Audie Murphy.

 

Then the scene where the main human guy grabs that SCAR and keeps his homies from firing off the C4, the one guy in the back has a pistol.  They did the whole charge / rack the slide bit that Hollywood loves that is so infuratingly stupid.  If you're keeping a gun on someone who is a threat and you don't have a round in the chamber you're a dummy.  Why can't they just have a character say Ah, ah, ah touch that pistol and you're a dead man type of threat instead of racking the slide 20 times as a warning?  It's the worst.  Especially when it happens multiple times and no round ejects. 

 

Minor complaints in the grand scheme of things, though. 

[assfax]

New Conan movie:  More like Keanu the Barbarian. (nailed it)  The parts where I said "that's lame" outweighed the parts where I said "movie fucking rules!".  I remember Conan doin' a lariat and picking up a big chain to hit a horse.  That part where he has to fight 50 sand warriors was the worst level in the game.

 

All throughout I kept noticing how shitty the pacing was.  They rushed everything that wasn't a major effects shot.

 

 

Also lame was that witch daughter where she had real shitty CGI to remove her eyebrows but on blu-ray it just looked like everything above her temples had no texture.   Also I had to look it up to confirm that it was actually Rose McGowan.

 

Also lame was how the fucking badguy at the end didn't even get extra powers.  At least Skeletor turned into gold at the end of Masters of th' Universe.  Also lame was how that disembodied hand didn't come back and annoy Conan when he thought the coast was clear. 

 

Also, never knew the hero lady's name.  They probably yelled it real fast at the end of one of those truncated exposition scenes.

 

 

'member that PS3 Conan game with Ron Perlman that I almost enjoyed save for the final boss?  Way better.  Not this Harry 'n' th' Hendersons shit.

 

Beginning of the movie = Twilight Princess + Assassins Creed III + Rise of Nations.

 

Should've had the Cast a Deadly Spell ending where the pure blood wasn't pure 'cause Conan gave her the ol' crushing blow.

 

The Shawshank Redemption voiceovers also dropped off the face of the earth.

 

2 dollar blu ray tho'.  There were a couple titties as well.

[Brian Fowler]

I got a free hd digital copy of that movie, and it was worth every penny.

 

(I vaguely remember enjoying a few scenes here and there)

[Zero]

Got around to watching Flight and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Flight was way too long, and really was not what I was expecting. Seemed like a chore to finish it. Budapest was really fun, and great visually. Wes Anderson knows how to make you feel like the most plain and boring person in the world.

[Niners Fan in CT]

There were some incredibly powerful scenes in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes man.. I loved that every character human or ape was complex. Even Koba had his reasons and good ones. They stayed away from that one dimensional villain bullshit.  

[Jingus]

I got a free hd digital copy of that movie, and it was worth every penny.

 

(I vaguely remember enjoying a few scenes here and there)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...muthafuck whole entire bunches of the new Conan movie.  

 

 

 

Conan the Barbarian (2011): 3/10

New rule: if you’ve got guys wearing armor, that armor must DO SOMETHING.  Because pretty much all the henchmen in Conan the Barbarian are wearing huge, elaborate armor… and every single weapon just slices right through that shit like it’s not even there.  “You appear to be wearing full plate mail, which will stop anything (other than a bullet) dead in its tracks.  Now I shall swing my broadsword at your chest, and voila, a massive spurt of CGI blood appears!”  Fuck you, lazy filmmakers!  They wore that shit for a REASON!  It was actually pretty uncommon for a knight to die in battle, because between their armor and their ransom it was way easier to capture them alive.  I’m tired of medieval movies where the poor actors and stunt men have to be imprisoned in these heavy little ovens, and then the hero ignores the armor and the laws of physics to rack up an impossibly easy body count. 

 

I’m told that this version of Conan the Barbarian hews closer to Robert E. Howard’s original stories than the Arnold movie.  And whoopty-fucking-doo, who cares, if the movie sucks?  Because, goddamn, this movie sucks.  I’d rather watch Conan the Destroyer again than revisit this shit sundae.  Hell, maybe even Red Sonja.  The criminally unnecessary remake is a dour, ponderous, irritating, phony waste of your time.  This is the exact movie that Your Highness was satirizing, and never mind the fact that Your Highness came out first. 

 

We immediately go about pissing off the fanboys by changing Conan’s origin story from both the original books and the older films: Conan (played as an adult by Jason Momoa) was born on a battlefield, son of a dying Cimmerian warrior princess and the village… chief?  Blacksmith?  Both?  Anyway, that’s Ron Perlman, and his beard is coming to get you.  When he’s a teenager, the evil army of Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) invades Conan’s village and kills everybody but him.  And even though the players are different, from there the play proceeds in the exact way we expect it.  Conan grows up to be a warrior (not pushing around a giant wheel this time), gathers a bunch of allies, fights the evil king and saves the hot chick and yadda yadda yadda. 

 

Geez, where do I begin?  Let’s start with all that CGI blood, and damn’d fake-looking it is.  Hollywood, there are some things that digital effects are just no good at, deal with it.  Or the excessive amount of weird hairstyles; like, Edward Scissorhands and The Fifth Element COMBINED didn’t have this much weird hair.  We’re talking a The Last Airbender level of weird hair on everyone.  Or the fact that they hired Rose McGowan only to smother her in ugly makeup and never get her naked.  Speaking of which, why is it that only the shittiest of exploitation movies (such as this one) tend to throw a bunch of anonymous tits at you early in the film, and then never show any skin again? 

 

Heck, let’s take a longer look at Rose to further explore some shittiness, and I’m not just talking about her blatant Freddy Krueger knife-glove.  At one point she causes a bunch of warriors to grow out of the sand and attack our heroes.  Okay, that’s a nifty power.  How does it work?  How many sandmen can she summon at one time?  Is there a limit?  Does she directly control them, or do they have minds of their own?  Do they fear their own destruction, or even conceive of it?  Why do they instantly fall apart whenever they receive a wound?  Why can’t they just ignore the wounds (cuz they’re made of sand) and go on fighting?  And why doesn’t the sorceress ever use this trick at any other time?  She runs into Conan a LOT; you’d think “hey, maybe I should try summoning some more instant minions” might cross her mind, but apparently not. 

 

And then there’s the billion other plot holes, like the strange conceit that Khalar Zym is both an infamous world-renowned conqueror yet somehow still obscure enough that the Cimmerians had no idea who he is.  Or that he’s chasing at least one Macguffin too many; either put together the magic mask or resurrect your witchy wife, don’t try both at the same time.  And what was the POINT of said magic mask, when it seemingly gives its bearer absolutely no extra powers whatsoever?  Why the hell did Conan haul ass away from that kraken instead of killing the damn thing?  Why was the ritual sacrifice such an obvious ripoff of the one in Temple of Doom?  Why did the villain’s fortress just decide to collapse for literally no reason at all?  Why does Morgan Freeman’s narration get less and less frequent as time goes on, eventually disappearing without a trace?  But if we ask questions like that, we’ll be here all goddamn day.  So let’s just end with the most important question of all: why the hell was there any need for a remake of Conan the Barbarian?

[scraylo187]

Just watched Snowpiercer on Amazon Instant. You should watch Snowpiercer.