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APRIL 2015 MOVIE THREAD


RIPPA

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My wife and I have been watching bits and pieces of White House Down.

 

Hoo boy...

 

Normally - I am really really good at being able to ignore terrible Hollywood logic to allow their plots to advance but man...

 

I have an easier time acccepting people outrunning frost in Day After Tomorrow than some of the nonsense in this movie.

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My wife and I have been watching bits and pieces of White House Down.

 

Hoo boy...

 

I love the part where the military is prepared fire missiles at the White House and blow it up along with the terrorists and the black President, but aborts when a little white girl is on the North Lawn trying to wave off fighter jets with a flag.

 

And people wonder why we riot..

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White House Down is so ridiculous it's hard not to like on some level.

 

Cool black president with a rocket launcher....fighting terrorists~!

 

Feels like a parody of Air Force One and action movies in general.

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My wife and I have been watching bits and pieces of White House Down.

 

Hoo boy...

 

I love the part where the military is prepared fire missiles at the White House and blow it up along with the terrorists and the black President, but aborts when a little white girl is on the North Lawn trying to wave off fighter jets with a flag.

 

And people wonder why we riot..

 

 

To be fair, though, the air strike is ordered by the evil turncoat sworn-in president.  So it's not like a good guy ordered it, then had them change their mind when they saw the little girl.

 

Olympus Has Fallen is the vastly superior "White House under siege" movie.

 

'Olympus Has Fallen' has the slightly more believable siege, in that it would take a whole lot of people and some really intricate planning to swarm the White House, while 'White House Down' has more of a 'I'm pretty sure if taking the White House over were that easy, it would be under siege every three or four days' vibe.  That said, 'White House Down' is the vastly superior movie because it is more silly: Channing Tatum making one-liners while his daughter is in possibly mortal danger, Jamie Foxx an Obama/Django/Bill Cosby hybrid being easy-going lovable president making jokes, not knowing how to operate guns etc., and one of the McPoyle's as a wise-cracking hacker.  'OHF' takes itself way too seriously for such a stupid premise.

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I watched 'Varsity Blues' last night.  I'd never seen it before.  There was a lot more nudity that I expected out of a teen comedy/drama.  I thought James Van Der Beek did a not-that-bad job (Though his accent at times...yeesh) and it was a decentish football movie which is a lot more than I expected.

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I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011 version) and was pleasantly surprised. 4/5 stars - took off some for scientific stupidity and the one-dimensional feel of Freida Pinto's character. I've seen the Robert Heston version once and don't remember being all that impressed with it, but this did really well. Lithgow and Franco's interactions hit a bit close to home and were perfectly beautiful and painful. Serkis was perfect. I've put the sequal into my queue.

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I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011 version) and was pleasantly surprised. 4/5 stars - took off some for scientific stupidity and the one-dimensional feel of Freida Pinto's character. I've seen the Robert Heston version once and don't remember being all that impressed with it, but this did really well. Lithgow and Franco's interactions hit a bit close to home and were perfectly beautiful and painful. Serkis was perfect. I've put the sequal into my queue.

 

The sequel lacks a bit of storytelling but is still a pretty good motion picture.  It is well meaning and very insightful, yet it feels a tad ponderous in the second act. 

 

You have seen the Humans Are Fucking Douchebags plot unfold in far less tedious movies than this one.

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I totally forgot to mention that I watched The Fault In Our Stars

 

I only did this after reading the book (the one downside to working with kids... okay one OF the downsides... is paying attention to their interests to try and stay informed.) It was... yeah. I mean it is a book/movie about cancer. Fuck anyone who tries to be all IT IS THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER!!!!

 

The advantage to reading the book first is that I was able to skip the parts of the movie that were of the book that I hated (basically anything with Willem Defoe). It is a fairly good adaptation of the book so at least it did that. (and the book is written well enough that I will now read Paper Towns and then see THAT movie and then hate myself.)

 

I will also say that Shailene Woodley is WAY more believable as fragile cancer patient about to die than she is as ass kicking action hero.

 

I still don't understand why kids went back to the movie multiple times so they could bawl their eyes out outside of kids are stupid.

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I told you that you would dig it.

 

And aw, Willem DaFoe killed it as Van Houten.  He may have been a grumpy drunk, but he didn't tell Hazel anything that wasn't true.  He is handled a lot better in the movie than he was in the book, IMO.

 

I think I am the only person in the world that actually liked Van Houten or at least sympathized with the poor guy.

 

I think it was important for Van Houten to pretty much spell it out to Hazel that:

 

1) The point of his book is that life may on for the people you leave behind, but dead people are dead.  You get no progress reports on your loved ones from beyond the grave.

 

2) He is not responsible for her happiness.  It is sad that Hazel doesn't figure out that she is responsible for sustaining her own joy until Gus is about to die but then we wouldn't get to hear her brilliant and sob inducing Little Infinities eulogy..

 

3) Speaking from the point of view of pain makes you experienced but it doesn't make you an oracle.  Hazel's insistence that Van Houten teach her how to handle the burden of death was annoying to me because she couldn't get it through her head that Van Houten was still processing his pain and not everyone is capable of doing that gracefully. 

 

Van Houten wants to be able to express himself without the burden of becoming inspirational and that is not always possible.  If you are going to put yourself out there like that, you need to own what you say.  THE TROLLEY PROBLEM~!

 

4) We are not responsible for someone else's happiness, but we ARE responsible for our own character.  Van Houten realizes this and wants to get his shit together, but has wallowed in his own pity for so long that he no idea how function without sorrow.  Being happy is hard work.. Gus is the kick in the ass that gets Van Houten on the path to the new normal.

 

The Fault In Our Stars is my daughter's Passion of the Christ aka the movie she loves with all her heart but will never ever watch ever again.

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Nothing on the DVR I wanted to watch so I had an Ahnuld double feature last night. The Sixth Day and Collateral Damage. Sixth Day in particular is one of my favorites of his. 

 

"You should clone yourself"

"Why's that?"

"So you can go fuck yourself"

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I didn't like Batman & Robin at all, but it was just a bad film.  Had nothing to do with the tone, really. 

 

Aside from Jim Carrey being dressed as The Riddler yet acting like The Joker, I thought that Batman Forever was a perfectly fine popcorn muncher.

 

I am not a big fan of Batman Returns because it has far too much of Burton's signature gothic crap than it needed. 

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I didn't like Batman & Robin at all, but it was just a bad film.  Had nothing to do with the tone, really. 

 

Aside from Jim Carrey being dressed as The Riddler yet acting like The Joker, I thought that Batman Forever was a perfectly fine popcorn muncher.

 

I am not a big fan of Batman Returns because it has far too much of Burton's signature gothic crap than it needed. 

C'mon JT, you act as if Batman & Robin wasn't the greatest updated Batman '66 movie ever.

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Tim Burton is the Vince Russo of film making.  He may have a few good ideas but please get somebody to reign him in and keep the bad ideas from being used.  Never give him a blank check and full creative freedom.

 

He hits it out of the park every now and again.  Big Fish and Sleepy Hollow fucking rule.

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I didn't like Batman & Robin at all, but it was just a bad film.  Had nothing to do with the tone, really. 

 

Aside from Jim Carrey being dressed as The Riddler yet acting like The Joker, I thought that Batman Forever was a perfectly fine popcorn muncher.

 

I am not a big fan of Batman Returns because it has far too much of Burton's signature gothic crap than it needed. 

C'mon JT, you act as if Batman & Robin wasn't the greatest updated Batman '66 movie ever.

 

 

I cannot completely hate on Batman & Robin because it caused one of the best Smashing Pumpkins songs in years to be created.

 

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Oh my God, Sleepy Hollow and the badassery of the Headless Horseman.

 

Cameo from Chistopher Walken:

 

 

Swordwork by Ray mother fucking Park:

 

 

What a fantabulous Tim Burton movie..

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Oh my God, Sleepy Hollow and the badassery of the Headless Horseman.

 

Cameo from Chistopher Walken:

 

 

Swordwork by Ray mother fucking Park:

 

 

What a fantabulous Tim Burton movie..

Oh yes! I remember watching this mostly because I had the hugest crush on Ray Park for the longest time. What is he doing these days?

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