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SEPT 2015 MOVIE THREAD


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I watched 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown with Dean Ambrose and it's. . . not bad.  Nothing special, but not a waste of 90 minutes. Ambrose does decently in his role.  The ending is just there, but the action scenes were solid and the movie is grittier than I had anticipated.  The heel had good heat throughout and you'll want to see him get his. With a better script and direction, Ambrose would make for a pretty good action film star, sort of a junior Bruce Willis in the Die Hard mold.  It suffers from a flimsy plot and precious few surprises, but Ambrose and Roger Cross carry it to a solid outing.

 

Kind of disappointed Ambrose didn't do a Dirty Deeds on anyone.

 

WWE Studios' movies are the type of thing my dad (when he was alive) loved. Seriously: He adored The Condemned.

 

That is honestly the best compliment I can give them. Grim, middle-aged guys who like to see people getting shot for no reason and explosions for no reason: That's the audience WWE are catering to here.

 

It's not so bad. You won't make hundreds of millions of dollars; but you'll probably make an OKish profit from all these Movies4Men channels and DTV audience.

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WWE Studios' movies are the type of thing my dad (when he was alive) loved. Seriously: He adored The Condemned.

 

That is honestly the best compliment I can give them. Grim, middle-aged guys who like to see people getting shot for no reason and explosions for no reason: That's the audience WWE are catering to here.

 

It's not so bad. You won't make hundreds of millions of dollars; but you'll probably make an OKish profit from all these Movies4Men channels and DTV audience.

 

 

I listened to a podcast last night that went into how apparently the new thing is ridiculously small-budget movies being churned out ad nauseum by the same production company and some of them being flops and some of them being hits with a super-high return on investment. Oculus ran on this philosophy because one of the guys at the helm was Jason Blum (the guy who produced Paranormal Activity, which is the most successful movie of all-time as far as ROI goes), and it ended up making around $44M at the box office versus a $5M budget. The bonus here is with so many cheap movies being cranked out like that, if it flops, it's no big deal.

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WWE Studios' movies are the type of thing my dad (when he was alive) loved. Seriously: He adored The Condemned.

 

That is honestly the best compliment I can give them. Grim, middle-aged guys who like to see people getting shot for no reason and explosions for no reason: That's the audience WWE are catering to here.

 

It's not so bad. You won't make hundreds of millions of dollars; but you'll probably make an OKish profit from all these Movies4Men channels and DTV audience.

 

 

I listened to a podcast last night that went into how apparently the new thing is ridiculously small-budget movies being churned out ad nauseum by the same production company and some of them being flops and some of them being hits with a super-high return on investment. Oculus ran on this philosophy because one of the guys at the helm was Jason Blum (the guy who produced Paranormal Activity, which is the most successful movie of all-time as far as ROI goes), and it ended up making around $44M at the box office versus a $5M budget. The bonus here is with so many cheap movies being cranked out like that, if it flops, it's no big deal.

 

 

So the Cannon Studios business model is becoming a thing now?

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One might say the business model has been perfected. The Visit was a Blumhouse production, and that's already made over 30 mil versus a $5M budget, and people are calling it Shyamalan's best in a long while (though that's not really saying much). Interesting what happens when a director used to big blockbusters needs to scrimp and watch bidget resources carefully.

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I'm kind of in favor of this if it also involves a certain amount of creative freedom with this buckshot of small investments so every now and then a Savage Steve Holland or someone gets to make something offbeat and fun of simple and human.

 

 

You know the movie industry is fucked when they go 'man, the business model of major label record companies in the 90s is a clear improvement on what we were doing'.

 

I thought the recording industry model was to give a bunch of kids a huge advance and then trick them into spending it all on your producers and equipment so they end up with a four albums left on their deal and owing you hundreds of thousands dollars.

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I watched 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown with Dean Ambrose and it's. . . not bad.  Nothing special, but not a waste of 90 minutes. Ambrose does decently in his role.  The ending is just there, but the action scenes were solid and the movie is grittier than I had anticipated.  The heel had good heat throughout and you'll want to see him get his. With a better script and direction, Ambrose would make for a pretty good action film star, sort of a junior Bruce Willis in the Die Hard mold.  It suffers from a flimsy plot and precious few surprises, but Ambrose and Roger Cross carry it to a solid outing.

 

Kind of disappointed Ambrose didn't do a Dirty Deeds on anyone.

 

WWE Studios' movies are the type of thing my dad (when he was alive) loved. Seriously: He adored The Condemned.

 

That is honestly the best compliment I can give them. Grim, middle-aged guys who like to see people getting shot for no reason and explosions for no reason: That's the audience WWE are catering to here.

 

It's not so bad. You won't make hundreds of millions of dollars; but you'll probably make an OKish profit from all these Movies4Men channels and DTV audience.

 

 

They need to target the Steven Seagal "Direct to DVD" market.

 

My mother buys all that shit out of the bargain bin and would totally watch Under Seige starring Roman Reigns or something.

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The story of the Fast and Furious films is that of the most generic, superficial, willfully silly and ridiculous blockbuster franchise ever...but one that still manages to have these occasional touches of absolute creative genius. Oh, and due to the impressively diverse case, it's also the most progressive thing Hollywood has churned out in ages. It's all very weird. 

 

Anyway: I suspect Dom and his crew will be fighting aliens next. That's the only place left to go. 

 

The President (who looks and sounds just like Dom) is assassinated.

 

To prevent global catastrophe the Secret Service use Hobbs to convince Dom to role play as the POTUS for the final year of his term. Unfortunately this is right when a shadow group (connected to the Shaw brothers of course) are manipulating pieces to start World War 3 between the USA and China!

 

Now our group must head to Beijing to track down the mastermind of this group and stop the plans for nuclear war!

 

It turns out that the mastermind is Helen Mirren playing her character from RED - Victoria - who is revealed as the mother of Owen and Deckard Shaw! This then leads to the FnF crew teaming with/fighting the RED crew to stop those evil Brits from taking over the world...

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WWE Studios' movies are the type of thing my dad (when he was alive) loved. Seriously: He adored The Condemned.

 

That is honestly the best compliment I can give them. Grim, middle-aged guys who like to see people getting shot for no reason and explosions for no reason: That's the audience WWE are catering to here.

 

It's not so bad. You won't make hundreds of millions of dollars; but you'll probably make an OKish profit from all these Movies4Men channels and DTV audience.

 

They need to target the Steven Seagal "Direct to DVD" market.

 

My mother buys all that shit out of the bargain bin and would totally watch Under Seige starring Roman Reigns or something.

 

They keep trying to look like a legitimate movie studio with the limited theater releases, but we clearly understand it's just cover for VOD/direct to DVD release.  There's no shame in creating product strictly for that market.  Hell, some of those movies are actually pretty good.  Set a budget, hiring a young director looking to pad their resume, and write a solid script.  The money practically makes itself.

 

It turns out that the mastermind is Helen Mirren playing her character from RED - Victoria - who is revealed as the mother of Owen and Deckard Shaw! This then leads to the FnF crew teaming with/fighting the RED crew to stop those evil Brits from taking over the world...

 

Being that the person has expressed interest in FnF, your plot makes sense.  Wait, you're not a screenwriter for the franchise, are you?  Dishing out the good stuff for us? :)

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I'm kind of in favor of this if it also involves a certain amount of creative freedom with this buckshot of small investments so every now and then a Savage Steve Holland or someone gets to make something offbeat and fun of simple and human. 

 

That's often bandied out as the biggest perk of this model. The budgets for movies like this are so low that it's not worth sticking your head in. Directors under Blumhouse get almost complete creative control as long as they turn the completed work in on time and on budget.

 

Rob Cohen, who directed the first The Fast and the Furious, became the toast of Hollywood, and became toxic just as quickly after Stealth bombed, got in on the Blum deal running The Boy Next Door. Amusingly enough, after the $4M budget ran out and Jason Blum rejected Cohen's request for more dough (at Blumhouse, budgets are hard and fast, no exceptions), he went behind Blum's back and got $300,000 from Universal to reshoot scenes and make better special effects.

 

It ended up raking in over $50M.

 

(Also worth mentioning: at Blumhouse, the actors and directors are given union scale, with incentives based on the movie's profits. So when you get someone like Jennifer Lopez on board, you can almost guarantee she'll be on the talk show beat promoting the hell out of it, since if the movie makes more money, SHE makes more money.)

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If nothing else, when they do the SCOOBY DOO (animated?) reboot, there should be a scene when the van breaks down and some shadows loom over the gang until the reveal:

 

"WWE Sports Entertainments Supsterstars The New Day?  What are you doing here?"

 

"We were out here in the swamp looking for truffles, Big E. has a big truffles thing."

 

"Mmmmmm..mmmmmmm"

 

"Hoooooonk...."

 

"That's Xavier agreeing.  He only speaks in trombone!  Anyway, you guys look like you could use some help."

 

"Well, we are stuck here and we're supposed to be hunting a ghost."

 

"A g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-ghost?"

 

"HOOOOOOOONK HOOOOOOOONK"

 

[Xavier and Big E. hold each other and tremble]

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They need to target the Steven Seagal "Direct to DVD" market.

 

My mother buys all that shit out of the bargain bin and would totally watch Under Seige starring Roman Reigns or something.

 

Why not Ryback?

 

 

He's busy filming the Universal Soldier reboot with Rob Van Dam

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They need to target the Steven Seagal "Direct to DVD" market.

My mother buys all that shit out of the bargain bin and would totally watch Under Seige starring Roman Reigns or something.

Why not Ryback?

He's busy filming the Universal Soldier reboot with Rob Van Dam

Googling now. You'd best not be teasing me.

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Black Mass was pretty good, maybe not as gritty as I wanted (for a film with a guy strangling the shit out of people, still), but good. Johnny Depp plays Dracula for apparently the second time in the last five years and has a very good Renfield to second him. In retrospect I could have waited for the DVD but it saved my ass from being drowned in a storm tonight so I can't complain. Also has closing credits identical to Straight Outta Compton, which was weird considering that was the last film I saw in the exact same theater.

 

EDIT: Oh, and there are scenes I wanted to cackle at but didn't want to come off like a total madman in the room. There was at least one that everyone else got with me on, but I resisted otherwise. My sense of humor isn't that of most others.

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Black Mass was pretty good, maybe not as gritty as I wanted (for a film with a guy strangling the shit out of people, still), but good. Johnny Depp plays Dracula for apparently the second time in the last five years and has a very good Renfield to second him. In retrospect I could have waited for the DVD but it saved my ass from being drowned in a storm tonight so I can't complain. Also has closing credits identical to Straight Outta Compton, which was weird considering that was the last film I saw in the exact same theater.

 

EDIT: Oh, and there are scenes I wanted to cackle at but didn't want to come off like a total madman in the room. There was at least one that everyone else got with me on, but I resisted otherwise. My sense of humor isn't that of most others.

I really didn't like Black Mass, The Departed did the Whitey Bulger story much better sorta like how Tombstone did the Wyatt Earp story better than "Wyatt Earp."

 

There was some bad accents too, not Rob Morrow in Quiz Show bad but still pretty bad. I have no idea what Cumberbatch and Edgerton were going for.

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Honestly, there are probably half a dozen gangster films better than Black Mass that have came out in the last couple years: The Town, The Departed, The Drop (I'm sensing a theme here...) but I still appreciated the acting.

 

EDIT: God's Pocket needs to be mentioned here. It's like the film that should never have been but is.

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